


Patriot Acts

by chai4anne



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-03
Updated: 2008-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-15 11:26:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 59,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14789624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chai4anne/pseuds/chai4anne
Summary: An AU that asks what might have happened to Josh and Donna if Bob Russell had won the nomination and the White House instead of Matt Santos.





	1. Chapter 1: Breakdown

**Author's Note:**

> A copy of this work was once archived at National Library, a part of the [ West Wing Fanfiction Central](https://fanlore.org/wiki/West_Wing_Fanfiction_Central), a West Wing fanfiction archive. More information about the Open Doors approved archive move can be found in the [announcement post](http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8325).

  
Author's notes: Note 1: I first posted this story on JDFF in June 2006. I've made some changes to it since then, mostly to bring Josh's memories in the first section more in line with the actual dialogue on the show. My thanks to Shan for pointing the discrepencies out. Where differences still remain, they're deliberate-I'm assuming that he would probably distort some things as he remembered them.

Note 2: So, Matt Santos has won the election, Josh and Donna are together at last, and, except for the loss of Leo, all's well with the world. You'd think I could rest happily with that. But I've wondered for a long time what might have happened if Bob Russell had won the Democratic nomination and even (riding on the coattails of Bartlet's popularity, with Vinick weakened by some of the same things we saw on the show) the White House. That's what this story is about. It really begins at the Democratic Convention, which I've put in Los Angeles, although the first scene takes place a few weeks later in Washington, D.C. I'm assuming that the events in \"Isaac and Ishmael,\" which we're told were not intended to fit into the rest of the series, haven't taken place in this world: there's been no 9/11 during the Bartlet (or any other) administration when this story begins. And I should probably also point out that the bill I've called the Patriot Act here is different in a number of ways from the legislation known by that title in our world, though I imagine its provisions won't sound entirely unfamiliar. Nothing in this story is intended to be an exact replica of anything in real life, but readers who don't like allusions to real-life events in their fanfic probably won't care for this-as I expect they've already figured out.

Be warned: This is a pretty serious and angsty fic. Some readers might find the events in the first two sections of this story or the last one disturbing. To take the edge off that, I finally gave in, listened to Mistletoe's ceaseless pleading, and wrote two endings for it. The first is the one I thought the story really wanted; the second is there for everyone-including me-who might find the first too hard to take, and even that one isn't perfectly happy. So please read advisedly: this is definitely a romance, but it's also another kind of story altogether.

My thanks to Sally Reeve, for letting me read her story, \"The Road Less Travelled\" (JDFF 21632-21637) while she was writing it. As I waited anxiously to find out where her Josh had disappeared to after wrapping his car around a tree, the idea for this story popped into my mind more or less complete and refused to be quiet and leave me alone until I'd written it. .) On the other hand, I didn't read Speranza's beautiful \"Epiphany\" until \"Patriot Acts\" was almost complete; there are some moments in the second section of my story that may seem to echo hers, but the resemblances are purely coincidental-I'd already written them when I read hers.

Many thanks are due to Mistletoe, who talked me through this blow by blow, even when she thought she'd hate it; to Aim and Sandra, for reading and making helpful comments; and to Bel, always. This story is for them, and for everyone who thinks that how you vote matters or who wants to see patriotism defined differently than it so often is today.

If there's anything you like in this, it would be kind of you to let me know  


* * *

Patriot Acts

Our fathers bled at Valley Forge, the snow was red with blood.  
Their faith was worn at Valley Forge, their faith was brotherhood.  
Wasn’t that a time, wasn’t that a time?  
A time to try the souls of men, wasn’t that a terrible time?

Brave men who fought at Gettysburg now lie in soldiers’ graves  
But there they stemmed the rebel tide and there their faith was saved.  
Wasn’t that a time, wasn’t that a time?  
A time to try the souls of men, wasn’t that a terrible time?

The wars are long, the peace is frail, the madmen come again,  
There is no freedom in a land where fear and hate prevail.  
Isn’t this a time, isn’t this a time?  
A time to try the souls of men . . . 

(“Wasn’t That a Time?”—The Weavers)

 

Part I—Breakdown 

(Georgetown, Washington, D.C.: July 25, 2006, 9:45 p.m.) 

The light was too bright; it hurt his eyes. He squeezed them shut again. He was floating on a dark, fuzzy sea. The darkness was better than the light, easier, more comfortable, though he knew there was pain there, just under the surface of the waves, washing under him, washing over him. He didn’t really mind; he could deal with that kind of pain. It was the light he didn’t want to deal with. If he opened his eyes there was light that was too bright and hurt. It was better down here in the darkness, floating on this dark, fuzzy sea, in this half-numbed pain that he could feel washing under him and over him but didn’t mind because it was dark and fuzzy and better than the light that was too bright, that hurt his eyes . . . .

“Josh.”

No.

“Josh.”

Please, no.

“Come on, Josh. Wake up. Talk to us.”

No, no, no.

“It’s okay, Josh. You’re going to be okay.”

God damn it, he’d fucked it up. 

“It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”

It was so not okay.

He’d fucked it up. Fucked everything up.

* * *

(Los Angeles: The Democratic National Convention: July 12, 2006)

“Thanks for all you did, Josh.”

“I’m sorry, Congressman.”

“And the Democratic Party’s nominee for President of the United States, BOB RUSSELL!”

“It’s all right, Josh. It was a good ride. We’ll do it again sometime.”

“I’m really sorry, sir.”

“BOB RUSSELL!” “BOB RUSSELL!!” “BOB RUSSELL!!!”

“And the nominee for Vice-President, ERIC BAKER!”

“BOB RUSSELL AND ERIC BAKER! RUSSELL FOR PRESIDENT!! RUSSELL-BAKER FOR AMERICA!!!”

* * *

(Los Angeles, the Convention hotel: July 13, 2006)

“No.”

“Come on, Josh.”

“You heard me, Will. I said no.”

“Come on, Josh. We won, you lost. Deal with it.”

“I am dealing with it.”

“You went pretty negative in your campaigning, you know. I had to really spin it to the Vice-President to get him to okay inviting you in.”

“Sorry you wasted your time.”

“If you let it go now, I don’t know if I’ll be able to sell it to him later, when you’ve gotten over this, whatever-it-is, and want to come on board.”

“I’m not going to want to come on board.”

“Josh, he’s a Democrat! We’re all Democrats. The party chose him; he’s the nominee. That’s all that should matter here.”

“He isn’t up to the job, Will. Maybe you don’t realize that. Maybe you don’t realize what the job involves.”

“I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

“Really? ‘Cause you don’t seem to have. He’s a lightweight, a nothing. How you can even think about putting him in the Oval, behind Jed Bartlet’s desk . . . .”

“They can’t all be Jed Bartlets, Josh. They can’t all be Nobel Prize-winning New England intellectuals. It was a miracle we got one man like that in—” 

“We?”

“You, then. A miracle you got one man like that in. You can’t expect the party to produce a whole string of others to take his place.”

“It could still do a whole lot better than Bingo Bob Russell, Will. It needs to do better. We have to do better.”

“Well, maybe you should have found a more viable candidate than a three-term Congressman nobody’d ever heard of before, Josh. I don’t care how honorable or how articulate your guy might be, he didn’t make the cut. We’ve got to run Russell.”

“Because you ran him.”

“He was going to be the candidate no matter what I did; he’s the Vice-President.”

“He should never have been the Vice-President. You know that.”

“He’s the Vice-President because the President made him the Vice-President, Josh! Your guy. Your guys—Bartlet and Leo. I went to work for him because I figured there had to be something there they’d seen, something worth fighting for.”

“You ever see it?”

“Your guys did.”

“The President wasn’t himself when he made that call, Will, you know that. Leo wasn’t himself. It was after Zoey was kidnapped, after the President stepped down and we had the Speaker running the country; everything was crazy. We were being pressured by the right; Leo didn’t think we could afford to take on a long confirmation battle for a different candidate. It was a bad call. We shouldn’t have to live with the results of that for another four, maybe eight years.”

“He’s not that bad, Josh.”

“Isn’t he?”

“He’s a good Democrat.”

“He’s more like a good Republican half the time. Why do you think they backed him for the Vice-Presidency?”

“Better that than an actual Republican.”

“I’m not so sure. At least then we’d know what we were dealing with. And Vinick would make a better Democrat than Russell does in some ways; he’s a good man.”

“Vinick? Don’t tell me you’re supporting Arnie Vinick, now.”

“No, of course I’m not. I just can’t support Bob Russell.”

“He’s a good man, Josh. Not brilliant, I’ll grant you that, but he can have brilliant people around him to make the decisions for him.”

“Meaning you?”

“Jesus, Josh, it’s you I’m trying to get on board here.”

“I don’t need the flattery, Will. I know what I can do and what I can’t. It’s one thing to advise the President, and another thing to be the President. I’ll never run for that office; I’d never trust myself to make the kind of decisions he’s going to have to make. The kind of decisions you’re going to have to make for him, if he’s as pliable as you’re saying. And are you sure he’s really going to be that pliable? Are you really going to be able to pull his strings and get him to do what you want him to do, when you want him to do it?”

“I’m not planning to be a puppet-master, Josh!”

“Then what are you planning to be? A circus-master? Because that’s what this Presidency will be, without a strong hand to steer it. Only there’ll be a strong hand; it will come from somewhere. It always does. There’s no such thing as a power vacuum in Washington, let alone in that office. The White House is power; that office is power—the highest power in the country, the single most influential power in the world. It will suck someone to it who will pull your man’s strings if you’re not up to pulling them yourself. And if, in fact, he doesn’t cut loose and start exercising the power for himself.”

“Josh, I’m putting up with this because I know you’re exhausted; it was a tough campaign, you lost it, and you can’t stand losing. But you don’t know what you’re talking about. Bob Russell’s not what you’re saying; he’s no genius, but he’s a decent man and a decent Democrat, Josh.”

“Is he? You think I don’t know what he got his wife to do to Ellie Bartlet that time?”

“It wasn’t anything Hoynes wouldn’t have done.”

“Yes it was. Hoynes can play the game better than anyone, but he has limits. He has principles. And he’s never been in the pocket of the right.”

“Too bad he didn’t get the nomination, then. Oh, but he couldn’t, could he? Because he couldn’t keep his pants zipped; he had to go after the pretty young interns and the babbling socialites. Nice set of principles and limits there. Yeah, he’d have been a good choice, all right.”

“Fuck off, Will. He’s done more good for this country than you or your performing monkey will ever do.”

“Okay, Josh. We’re not doing this now. When you get over your ego-maniacal snit and realize you actually want to do something for the next four months or the next four years besides sit on your ass on the sidelines throwing spitballs while you watch us on t.v., give me a call. I’ll see what I can do then.”

“Will—”

“Or if I’m too busy, call Donna. The Vice-President likes her; she might be able to talk him around.”

“This isn’t about Donna, Will.”

“Are you sure, Josh?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“You don’t have a problem joining a campaign where your former secretary is a major player now?”

“She was my assistant, not my secretary, and no, I don’t.”

“Really? You’re not very convincing, you know.”

“I have a problem joining Bob Russell’s campaign, Will. I have a problem with Donna’s joining Bob Russell’s campaign. I have a problem with the idea of Bob Russell as President of the United States.”

“She’s a very talented woman, Josh. A beautiful woman, too. Looks good in a power suit. Looks good on t.v.”

“She used to have ideals.”

“Now she has a career. I think she likes her career. I think she likes her new job a whole lot better than her old one. She likes being able to afford those power suits. She likes being on t.v. But mostly I think she just likes being listened to and taken seriously. By me—her boss. By our staff. By the Vice-President. It really makes me wonder, how a man like you could let all that talent go to waste all those years. It should make you wonder too, Josh, maybe question how smart you really are, shake up those cast-iron judgments of yours a bit. Get your head out of your ass for a change.”

“Go fuck yourself, Will.”

“I don’t have to fuck myself, Josh. I can get a woman to do it for me.”

“GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!!!”

“Jesus, Josh, I didn’t mean Do—”

“OUT! JUST GET THE FUCK OUT! And if you think I’m ever joining your campaign to put that cardboard cutout in the Oval Office, you have cardboard between your ears, you have your cock and balls for brains, and I’m guessing that equipment’s hardly up for the task it’s meant for, let alone having to do double duty in your skull!”

“Josh—”

“Get OUT!”

“We’ll win it without you, then. And when I’m C.O.S. and Donna’s Press Secretary, you’ll be hustling votes for Matt Santos for Mayor down in Galveston, or wherever he’s from.”

“Fuck you, Will.”

“You too, Josh. Have fun by yourself. ‘Cause if you don’t want to join us, that’s where you’re going to be.”

“He shouldn’t be President, Will.”

“He will be, if there’s anything Donna and I can do to make it happen.”

* * *

(Georgetown, Washington, D.C.: July 17, 2006, 1:45 a.m.)

“I didn’t serve you well, Congressman. I can’t think of a single thing I did . . . .”

“Bob Russell!”

“This job isn’t going anywhere for me, Josh!”

“You should be with me. You’re with the wrong campaign.”

“I’m not sure about Santos for Vice-President.”

“This job isn’t going anywhere . . .”

“You should be . . .”

“Bob Russell!”

“I can’t think of a single thing I did . . . .”

* * *

(Georgetown, July 19, 2006, 2:30 a.m.)

“Bob Russell!”

“I’m not sure about Santos for Vice-President.”

“Eric Baker!”

“Too much voltage at the bottom of the ticket.”

I can’t think of a single thing . . . .

“Gets people wishing the names were reversed.”

Can’t think of a single thing I did . . . .

“How’d you get so smart about this?”

“Bob Russell! Eric Baker!”

“Vote for Russell-Baker!”

“I had a good teacher, Josh.”

“Thanks.” 

“I meant Will.”

Can’t think of a single, god-damned, fucking thing I did . . . .

* * *

(Georgetown, July 21, 2006, 3:30 a.m.)

I can’t think . . . 

“What’s this?”

“It’s your diplomatic passport.”

I haven’t served you well. . . .

Your ticket and your passport.

I can’t think of a single thing I’ve done to serve you . . . 

“There was an explosion.”

Burning. 

”In the car.”

Burning.

“Significant blood loss.”

Bleeding.

“There was an explosion. She was in the car.”

Burning.

“She didn’t make it. Oh, Josh, darling, she didn’t make it, she didn’t make it out. Oh, sweetheart. Oh, my sweet darling girl.”

Burning.

“She died, Josh. She’s gone. She didn’t make it. She didn’t make it out of the house.”

Bleeding.

I can’t think . . . .

* * *

(July 23, 2006, 4:30 a.m.)

“Josh.”

I can’t think of anything . . . .

“Josh!”

I can’t think of anything . . . . 

“Dance with me.”

“Josh.”

“Dance with me!”

“Your father’s dead, Josh. Pulmonary embolism.”

“Your father died, Josh.”

“Pulmonary embolism. It’s a--” “Blood clot.”

Bleeding.

“There was an explosion.”

Burning.

“Significant bleeding.”

Bleeding.

Dire . . . .

“Pulmonary embolism. Brain damage.”

“Gaza. Here’s your ticket and your passport.”

Bleeding. Burning. I can’t think of a single thing . . . .

“I don’t need a doctor.” 

“Are you a doctor?”

Bleeding.

“She was the one who noticed first.”

Burning.

“If you were hurt.”

Bleeding.

“I wouldn’t stop for a beer.” “I wouldn’t stop for red lights.”

I can’t think of a single thing I’ve done to serve you . . . .

Burning.

“You told him those stories???”

Burning.

“Those are endearing stories. I like those stories.”

Burning.

“Those stories would make me like you.” 

Burning.

Like you, like you, like you, lo—

Bleeding. Bleeding. Burning . . . .

* * *

(Georgetown, July 24, 2:10 p.m.)

“You’re a handsome and powerful man.” “What do you want?”

Handsome and powerful. . . 

“You used to love it when I . . .”

“I’m making C.J. Chief of Staff.”

Yeah, handsome and powerful . . . 

“C.J.’s direct order . . .”

“Not going to China.”

“To avoid crushing your fragile ego, I’m trying not to say ‘C.J.’s direct order.’”

“You used to love it when I couldn’t dress myself without you.”

“I used to love peppermint ice-cream, too . . .”

 

(Georgetown, July 25, 4:15 a.m.)

“There was an explosion. Bleeding, significant bleeding.”

Burning. Bleeding. Significant bleeding, severe bleeding.

“Brain damage.”

“Pulmonary embolism.”

“Brain damage.”

“She didn’t make it out, Josh. She didn’t make it out. She didn’t make it . . .”

Bleeding. Burning.

“I haven’t served you well; I can’t think of anything I did—”

“She didn’t make it. She didn’t make it out.”

“Gaza. Here’s your ticket and your passport.”

Like you. Like you. Like you.

Fucked it up. Fucked everything up.

* * *  
(Georgetown, July 25, 3:25 p.m.)

“The delegates from California cast their votes for Bob Russell.”

Fuck-up.

“I like white wine.”

Fuck-up.

“The delegates from Florida cast their votes for Bob Russell.”

Stupid fuck-up.

“C.J.’s direct order.”

Fuck-up.

“I’m not going to China.”

Stupid fuck-up.

“The delegates from Pennsylvania cast their votes for Bob Russell.”

God-damned, stupid fuck-up.

“The delegates from Wisconsin cast their votes for Bob Russell.”

“I used to like peppermint ice cream, too.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

“There’ll be a temp from the pool tomorrow.”

“An explosion. In Gaza. The Codel.”

“Here’s your ticket and your passport.”

“The delegates from Wisconsin cast their votes for Bob Russell.”

Stupid, god-damned, fucking fuck-up.

“I meant Will.”

“The delegates from Wisconsin . . .”

“I meant Will.”

“The delegates from Wisconsin. . . .”

“I meant . . .”

“Bleeding. Significant bleeding.”

“Dire . . .”

“ . . . cast their votes . . .”

“Here’s your ticket and your passport.”

Jerk. Asshole. God-damned stupid fucking fuck-up.

“ . . . for Bob Russell!”

“Your ticket and your passport.”

“Could you just . . . “

“Bleeding. Significant bleeding.”

“Could you just stop . . . “

“Pulmonary embolism.”

“Stop being . . .”

“Brain damage . . .”

“Bleeding . . .”

“Your ticket and your passport.”

“The delegates from Wisconsin . . .”

“Could you just stop being, you know, YOU for a minute?”

Jerk.

“Bleeding.”

Stop being you. 

“Significant bleeding.”

Asshole.

Stop being you. Stop being you.

Significant bleeding. Severe bleeding. Dire.

Fuck-up, fuck-up, fuck-up.

Stop being you. Stop being you. Stop being you.

Bleeding. Significant bleeding. Severe bleeding.

Bleed, you jerk. Bleed, asshole. Bleed, fuck-up. 

It burns when it goes in. 

Burning. . . .

Bleeding. . . .

* * *

(Georgetown University Hospital, July 25, 2006, 9:45 p.m.)

“Josh.”

No.

“Josh.”

Please, no.

“Come on, Josh. Wake up. Talk to us.”

No, no, no.

“It’s okay, Josh. You’re going to be okay.”

God damn it, I fucked it up. 

“It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”

No. No. No.

* * *

(Georgetown University Hospital, July 26, 2006, 9:12 a.m.)

“You did a pretty good job there, you know?”

So how did I fuck it up?

“It wouldn’t have taken much longer.” 

Well, goddamn.

“Good thing the economy in the Philippines is so bad.”

Huh?

“Trained nurses cleaning houses for a living.”

Wha?

“No money . . . No jobs . . . Thousands of miles . . . kids . . . better life . . . .”

Oh.

“Pretty lucky timing.”

Pretty stupid timing. 

Wait.

She cleans in the morning, doesn’t she?

I wasn’t that stupid, was I?”

“Forgetting her shopping bag and coming back for it right then.”

Oh.

“You’re a pretty lucky guy.”

Yeah. 

Right.

“Trained nurses cleaning houses for a living.”

Why didn’t I do something about that while I had the chance?

* * *

(Georgetown University Hospital, July 26, 2006, 11:00 a.m.)

“Josh.”

“Hey, Leo.”

“Jesus.”

“Sorry.”

“What the fuck, kid?”

“Sorry.”

“I’m sorry, son. I didn’t think . . . I didn’t realize . . . What in God’s name happened?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Jesus, Josh, you did a brilliant job with your candidate. It’s not your fault he didn’t make it; he was nobody, you brought him out of nowhere, with no money; it was a huge accomplishment. I thought you knew that. The DNC’s been pounding on your door all week, trying to get you to come help with Russell. I was going to call you myself. I just thought . . . . I was just giving you a few days to regroup and cool off.”

“Cool off?”

“I figured you were pissed with me for not backing your guy at the end.”

“I wasn’t pissed with you, Leo.”

“Maybe you should have been.”

“Not with you.”

“With the President?”

“Leo! No.”

“Just with yourself, then.”

“Pretty much.”

“I should have known. Jesus, Josh, can’t you ever cut yourself a break?”

“That’s what I was trying to do, Leo.”

“Damn it, kid, don’t do that.”

“Sorry.”

“I hope that arm hurts like hell.”

“It’s starting to.”

“Good. Maybe that’ll teach you not to do this again.”

* * *

(Georgetown University Hospital, July 27, 2006, 9:30 a.m.)

“Does my mom know?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, that’s one good thing.”

“Josh.”

“Leo, please.”

“You’ve got to tell her, Josh.”

“Leo, please.”

“Okay, kid, okay—don’t get upset. You’ll have to tell her, you know, but you can wait a bit, until you’re ready. I won’t jump the gun on you.”

“How come she hasn’t heard?”

“The hospital called me. Apparently I’m still your first-contact person on all your cards.”

“Yeah, I guess I never got around to changing that stuff. But—hasn’t it hit the press yet?”

“No. You got lucky—quiet afternoon, everyone on your street was out. Or if they weren’t, they’ve decided to mind their own business. There hasn’t been a word about it.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. You got lucky in a few ways, you know, Josh. I was talking to your cleaning lady there earlier. She’s quite a woman. Trained nurse, from the Philippines.”

“So I heard.”

“It’s a pretty screwed-up world, isn’t it? There she is, almost qualified, three years of college, top marks, couldn’t afford to finish, can’t get a job there because there aren’t any, so she comes here to scrub floors for a living. What a waste, huh?”

“Yeah. I’ll say.”

“I don’t like waste, Josh.”

“Me either.”

“Wasted talent, wasted potential, wasted lives.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m just saying, don’t let it happen again.”

“I’ll—try.”

“You’ve got to do better than try.”

“I’ll do my best, Leo. I can’t promise anything more than that.”

“Well, your best is one of the best there is, Josh, so I’ll take that for a promise. So, here’s the deal. I’m booking you into a place I know about. There are good people there—the best. You’ll talk to them, do what they tell you to do. Everything they tell you to do. You’ll cooperate, you’ll be honest with them—really honest—and you’ll take as much time over this as you need to. We rushed things too much the last time. We’re not letting this happen again.”

“It wasn’t like last time.”

“No, it was worse.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Josh. Stop blaming yourself. That’s what this was all about, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really know what happened, what it was about.”

“Well, that’s what you’re going to find out. Now, what about the others?”

“What others?”

“C.J., Toby, Sam—your friends. Do you want me to call them for you, want to talk to them?”

“Not right now.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“What about Donna?”

“God, Leo. No. Not her. Please, not her.”

“Josh—”

“Anyone but her.”

“Damn it. I thought—”

“Don’t.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Damn it, it’s a screwed-up world, isn’t it, kid?”

“Don’t, Leo.”

“Okay. I’ll keep my mouth shut. And you’ll work on getting better. Really better.”

“Yeah.”

“So you can go back to making the world a less screwed-up place.”

“Yeah. I’ll try.”

“Then I think you’ll succeed, Josh. You usually do, when you put your mind to it.”

* * *

(Russell Campaign Offices, Chicago, Illinois: July 28, 2006, 1:05 p.m.)

“Have you heard anything yet, Will?”

“About what, Donna?”

“About—Josh. Has he called you yet?”

“No. I don’t think he’s going to. He was pretty clear about it when I talked to him.”

“You called again, didn’t you?”

“I’m not going to beg, Donna.”

“I’ve called. A couple of times.”

“You need to stop that. We’re not begging Josh Lyman to come and bail us out. We don’t need him to bail us out; we’ve done just fine on our own.”

“It’s not that, Will. I’m just—I haven’t heard back from him. Nobody seems to have heard from him.”

“Leo has.”

“He has?”

“Yeah, I talked to him this morning.”

“And? What did he say?”

“He said to drop it, that Josh wasn’t interested right now and we need to focus on the campaign. If he changes his mind, he can call us. Whether we take him or not’s another question; if he’s such an egomaniac he can’t swallow his pride and work for the candidate the party chose. . . .”

“He’s—really good at this, Will.”

“So are we.”

“We?”

“Yes, Donna. We.”

“That’s nice. Thank you.”

“That’s true.”

“Will?”

“Yeah?”

“Leo had talked to Josh?”

“He seemed to have, yeah.”

“He’s okay, then?”

“Far as I know. Why, what are you worried about?”

“Oh—nothing. Nothing, of course. No, of course, I’m not worried, really. Just surprised.”

“Don’t be. He’s just sulking because he didn’t win.”

“You think so?”

“Anybody with an ego like Josh’s will rebound pretty fast, Donna.”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

“It’s made of rubber and steel, isn’t it?”

“It can seem that way.”

“He’s a pain in the ass to work with, anyway. You know that better than anyone. We’re really better off without him.”

* * *  
* * *


	2. Chapter 2: Blue Ridge

Part 2—Blue Ridge

The Appalachians are old mountains . . . . The birth of the Appalachian ranges, some 680 million years ago, marks the first of several mountain-building plate collisions. As mountains rose, erosion began to wear them down. Streams carried rock debris downslope to be deposited in nearby lowlands . . . . 

By the end of the Mesozoic era, the Appalachian Mountains had been eroded to an almost flat plain. It was not until the region was uplifted during the Cenozoic Era that the distinctive topography of the present formed. Uplift rejuvenated the streams, which rapidly responded by cutting downward into the ancient bedrock. Some streams flowed along weak layers that define the folds and faults created many millions of years earlier. Other streams downcut so rapidly that they cut right across the resistant folded rocks of the mountain core, carving canyons across rock layers and geologic structures . . . .

(--Wikipedia, “Appalachian Mountains: Geology”)

 

Leo drove Josh to the clinic himself. “You don’t have time, Leo,” Josh protested, but Leo just fixed him with a look and said, “I can take the time,” and Josh knew he wasn’t going to win that argument. He didn’t really want to. If he was going to keep this quiet there wasn’t anyone else who could take him, and he wasn’t in any shape to drive himself yet. His left arm was still in a cast, and, while he didn’t think he’d deliberately drive off the road and wrap his car around a tree, he was tired enough and taking enough painkillers that it could happen accidentally. Though, if he was being completely honest with himself, he wasn’t really sure what he’d do if he had to spend a couple of hours on his own again, with nothing to think about except what a mess he’d made of things. A mess that he’d now made dramatically worse by slicing his arm open with a very sharp kitchen knife. 

He was particularly grateful to have Leo with him when he had to go back to his house to get his things, though he was also acutely embarrassed by the other man’s presence. “Do you want to stay here while I go in and get what you need?” Leo asked, quietly, when they pulled up in front of the townhouse. Josh shook his head. “I can do it,” he said. “I’ll just be a minute.” But Leo got out and climbed up the steps just behind him. “It’s all right, Leo,” Josh said, wishing he didn’t sound so tense. Leo just shot him another of those looks, and put a hand on his back. Josh was ridiculously glad to feel it there as he turned the key in the lock and walked into the home he hadn’t expected to see again.

The morning light was pouring into the living room, which was clean and tidy and smelled quite strongly of lemon cleanser. The rug was missing, and the seat cushions on the couch, which had been neatly covered with a blanket. Otherwise everything looked the way it always did. Josh wondered how much you paid your cleaning lady for tying a tourniquet around your arm and calling 911 to save your life, and then coming back to scrub the blood off your furniture and your floor. Did it matter that you hadn’t wanted the life saved? But you were grateful that she’d known how to do it so you didn’t lose your arm? He realized he was standing still and breathing too fast, and Leo’s hand had tightened on his back. He made himself look away from the couch, and walked more quickly than usual across the room towards his bedroom, where he got his suitcase out of the closet and started pulling the things he was going to need off hangers and out of drawers. Leo stood in the door, watching silently. It was strange going through his things in the bathroom and wondering what the other man would think if he packed the sleeping pills, the nail scissors. He held his breath as he crossed the living room again on their way out, hoping Leo wouldn’t notice, studiously avoiding looking at anything but the door. 

* * *

The place was a little over an hour south and west of Washington, nestled among the gentle and affluent hills of what everyone called Hunt Country. They turned off the highway and onto a quiet paved road, then off that into a drive marked only by a sign that said “Private,” and wound their way for several minutes through copses of trees and rolling fields dotted with Jersey cows or crisscrossed with rows of corn. Josh noted with a certain amount of cynicism how very discreet the whole approach was. It bugged the hell out of him that he was also deeply grateful for the privacy and the discretion.

Leo pulled the car to a stop in the circular gravel driveway in front of a perfectly-kept old plantation house shaded by enormous pin oaks and magnolias and surrounded by immaculately manicured lawns and flowerbeds, with a couple of barns in the foreground and a beautiful view of the Blue Ridge in the distance. “I feel like I’m going on my honeymoon,” Josh joked lamely. Leo snorted. “I’m not sticking around for the wedding night,” he said, clicking the trunk lid open as he climbed out of his seat. 

The elegance continued inside, in a cleaner and more contemporary style than Josh was expecting: there seemed to be a lot of big windows along the back of the building, taking in the view, and a merciful absence of axe-faced nineteenth-century slaveowners peering down from the walls, though there were enough antiques and oriental rugs to make it clear what kind of clientele the place was catering to. Josh wondered how much it was going to cost him, and which of his investment accounts he’d have to break into to pay for it. He didn’t really think his insurance would cover much of the bill. If, in fact, they covered anything for an attempted suicide. He hadn’t thought about that before, and winced at the thought of the hospital bills he’d run up, and now this. Of course, he hadn’t been planning to be around to have to think about things like that.

The staff member who greeted them was polished and professional. The room she took Josh to to put his suitcase in was a lot nicer than any place he’d stayed during the Santos campaign, and even had a piece of the mountain view. Nobody took away his shoelaces or his belt, though the woman waited outside the door and accompanied him and Leo downstairs again afterwards, showing him into a small sitting room with a couple of comfortable chairs in it, and telling him one of the administrators would be with him shortly. She left the door open and went back to her desk in the front hall, where Josh could see her looking through some papers, and realized she also had a clear view of him. Leo said goodbye then, and left. Josh had never wanted so badly to run after someone and beg them not to go. 

But then, he hadn’t really believed Donna was leaving until it was too late.

* * *

Leo got into his car and started it, half-relieved to have got Josh to his destination without any of the resistance he’d been expecting, and half wishing the boy—he always thought of him as a boy—was still sitting in the seat beside him, where he could keep an eye on him. Josh had been unusually quiet during the drive, sitting with his head back and his eyes closed much of the time, his hands resting on his knees instead of fidgeting with the controls around him the way he usually did when he had to be a passenger, the edge of the fabric cast poking out from the cuff of his left sleeve, which he hadn’t been able to do up. It was summer, hot and humid, and Leo had pointed out that he could wear a polo shirt if he wanted to, but he’d chosen a long-sleeved dress shirt and a tie; Leo wondered if the familiar formality bolstered his confidence, or if he just wanted to hide his bandaged arm as much as he could. Josh hadn’t said much, except a few stupid attempts at jokes, but something about the expression in his eyes when he’d said goodbye had cut Leo to the heart. He couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone look so lonely.

It had been a bad few days. As bad as that night in the hospital six years ago, when he’d just gotten over the horror of his best friend being shot and had been basking in the relief of knowing that Jed wasn’t badly hurt and thinking that all the rest of the staff were fine, when the emergency room doors had burst open and Josh had been carried in on a stretcher, bleeding from a hole in his chest. This should have been easier, because by the time the hospital had called him this time Josh had been stabilized and was obviously going to survive. But that had been offset for Leo by the shock of going to Georgetown University Hospital after the phone call and being told that the man he loved like a son was in the psychiatric wing because he’d quite clearly tried to commit suicide. It had been a serious attempt, the doctor had warned Leo. Not a hand through a window this time, bandaged up so the man could try to keep going with nobody the wiser, but two deep gashes down his left arm made with a very sharp, three-inch kitchen knife, the second one having found the vein he was after. It was pure luck that he’d been found in time, and found by someone who knew what to do. Leo was going to make sure that particular Filipina never had to scrub another floor again. 

But he couldn’t stop thinking about what might have happened, the call he might have got instead. And, after the visit to Josh’s apartment, he couldn’t stop thinking about what actually had happened, Josh sitting on his couch in his living room—a comfortable corner by a reading lamp, where Leo had seen him sitting countless times before—and dragging a sharp knife down his arm, trying to open a vein, trying to end a life he’d fought so hard and endured so much to keep after those racist boys with their guns had almost ended it the last time. A life that had done so much good for so many people. Leo shook his head, and wondered if it was his fault for telling Josh to find his own guy and run him, or for not doing more to help that guy win the nomination. Maybe it would have been better to have let Josh serve out the job he loved in Jed’s White House. Or to have given him the one he must have expected when Leo had had his heart attack. He’d never really explained that decision to Josh. He wished he’d done things differently now, talked to the boy more, at least, both then and at the end of the campaign. But Josh had been in this game a long time; he’d weathered job disappointments and political losses before. Leo didn’t really think that could be the whole story behind what had just happened. 

* * *

Josh stood in his room, looking out the window, trying to feel something and wondering why he couldn’t. It really was a beautiful view: the gardens, the gentle swell of fields and farms rolling away beyond them, that line of deep blue hills—mountains, whatever—beyond that. He’d always liked these mountains, liked the long blue line of the Catoctins coming into view when they travelled up 270 to Camp David, liked these higher ones on the odd weekends he’d taken over the years to drive with friends or girlfriends down to Shenandoah or Skyline Drive. Partly he’d been intrigued by their age and their history. It was ridiculous to call them mountains, really, but he knew they had been once, dramatic, jagged peaks as tall as the Rockies, or taller, that had been worn down by the wind and the rain for millennia after millennia until they’d become these softly rounded hills where Indian tribes had hunted and European settlers had met their first frontier. They were among the oldest rock formations in the country. He’d read about all that somewhere—National Geographic, probably—and been fascinated by it. And then there was the color, that soft, deep blue that always drew him, wherever he saw it: in the ocean he’d grown up beside, in a clear summer’s sky, in Donna’s—he didn’t want to think about that. Couldn’t afford to think about that. But except for the stab of pain the thought of Donna’s eyes had given him for a second, he couldn’t seem to feel anything at all, even standing here looking out at this beautiful view.

He’d spent the last couple of hours signing papers and feeling nothing as he signed away a small bookful of personal privacies and freedoms for the duration of his stay here. Feeling nothing and thinking about nothing, except on the simple, functional level of reading and listening to what the administrator was saying and moving his hand with the pen in it across the paper. He didn’t want to feel anything or think about anything, really, and yet he was going to have to, if he was going to keep the promise he’d made to Leo, and not upset everyone he knew and make a total, crashing fool out of himself all over again. He didn’t know how he was going to do it. Presumably the people in this expensive place were going to help him, but he wasn’t really convinced they were going to succeed. It wasn’t like he hadn’t had plenty of therapy before. He’d crashed before—if not quite so dramatically—and fought his way back before, but it hadn’t stuck, obviously. The thought of having to do it all over again was unutterably dreary. It didn’t help that he kept thinking how much better things would be if he hadn’t succeeded in making it back the first time. Matt Santos would be sitting comfortably with his wife and children in his attractive house in Texas, without the stigma of “loser” attached to his name and with a lot more money in his bank account, and Donna . . . . 

There was a knock at his door. He looked around. A staff member—one he hadn’t met yet—was looking in enquiringly. There weren’t any locks on the doors. “Is everything all right, Mr. Lyman?” she asked. “You’ll want to come down to lunch now.” “Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t realize what time it was.” Showing up to things on time was one of the promises he’d signed an hour ago. “That’s perfectly all right, Mr. Lyman, but if you’ll come with me now.” He straightened his tie, and followed her down the hall and the stairs to the dining room, where the other fucked-up people staying in this expensive place were starting on their soup. It was a relief when he didn’t recognize any of them. He chose a table by the wall where he could sit by himself, and hoped none of them recognized him, either.

* * *

“So, Mr. Lyman, why are you here?”

“You can call me Josh.”

The doctor smiled at him. She was a few years older than he was, and had an attractive smile. She was, he supposed, an attractive woman. It was odd how one could be aware of that and yet not feel a twinge of attraction or response. 

“Josh, then, if you’d rather. Now tell me why you’re here.”

“You have it in the admission papers, don’t you?”

“Of course I do, but I want you to tell me about it.”

“Okay. I, um, cut my arm.” He gestured vaguely with his left arm, in its bandage and stiffened fabric snap-on cast.

“How?”

“With, um, a knife.”

“Why did you do that?”

Josh shrugged, and looked around the room. For all the therapy he’d had, some of it voluntary, he’d never gotten comfortable answering the therapists’ questions. A girlfriend had got him to go the first time, and he’d gone back on his own a few times after that, usually after a particularly nasty breakup when a relationship he’d cared about—and he cared about his relationships far more often and more deeply than the women on the other side of them ever realized—had ended with his about-to-be-ex-girlfriend screaming that he was the most fucked-up son-of-a-bitch she’d ever had the bad luck to get involved with, and if he didn’t get help he’d end up having to pay for sex, because no woman who wasn’t that desperate would ever look at him again. He’d never stuck with it long enough to really get anywhere, although he’d found it helpful sometimes: that time Stanley—he couldn’t remember his last name—had helped him figure out what was bothering him so much about that card the NSA had given him, for instance. He hadn’t come back for more, but still, that day it had been a good thing. And that day with Keyworth, when he’d first developed the PTSD and hadn’t known what was happening to him, and had been terrified that he was losing his mind. He’d begged for more therapy after that, and had had some sessions with one of the people Keyworth had recommended, but his enthusiasm had tapered off quickly. He’d managed to get control of the worst of the symptoms in a few weeks, and had dropped the therapy as soon as he could get away with it. The whole focus then had been on Rosslyn, on accepting the feelings of helplessness and anger that came with being a victim of violence, and learning to control the flashbacks to the shooting; there’d been quite a lot of stuff they hadn’t gotten into, because Josh didn’t want to get into it and the man Keyworth had sent him to wasn’t as tough on him as Keyworth had been—though even the top shrink from ATVA hadn’t called him on all his crap. As hard as he’d found it to talk about what it felt like to have someone try to kill him, it was infinitely harder to talk about what it felt like to want to kill himself. 

“I don’t know,” he said.

“You must have some idea.”

Josh shrugged again.

“Well, the guy I’d been campaigning for had just lost the Democratic nomination. Now we’ve got to choose between a Republican and Bob Russell for President. Isn’t that a good enough reason?”

* * *

He had a schedule. He kept it folded in his shirt pocket for the first couple of days, so he wouldn’t screw up and miss being someplace when he was supposed to be. It wasn’t that he cared that much about doing the things he was supposed to do or being where he was supposed to be, but it made him uncomfortable to have a staff member knock on his door when he was three minutes late to something. He didn’t like being reminded that he couldn’t be trusted with something as basic as keeping himself alive.

The mornings began at 7:00, which was late for him. He was supposed to be at breakfast by 7:30, then go for a hike with a group of other “guests” around the property for an hour. A staff member always accompanied them, usually an athletic young man who also supervised workouts in the gym later in the day; he was really a sports therapist, but Josh couldn’t help thinking of him as their keeper. Josh would rather have jogged by himself, but he wasn’t supposed to jostle his arm that much, and they weren’t supposed to leave the garden area by themselves. There was a beautiful swimming pool in one of the outbuildings—a converted barn that had had skylights let into the roof and its big doors replaced with two-storey sheets of glass to take advantage of the views—but he wasn’t allowed to use that until the wounds had healed up. The brochure on the desk in his bedroom stressed the idea that the pool was indoors to make it available for exercise year-round; Josh suspected that the real reason was because the barn doors could be locked anytime there wasn’t a staff member around to act as a lifeguard and keep the clientele from drowning themselves on a bad day.

After the exercise they were allowed half an hour to shower and change in their rooms. Josh wondered at first how the place could afford to trust them that long alone, but realized after a day or two that the staff kept a pretty keen eye out for changes in people’s moods, and wouldn’t hesitate to send someone in to be with them if they thought it was necessary. It was an interesting balancing act, he thought, the way the administration tried to maintain the illusion of running a high-class spa that anyone rich enough might choose to go to for a relaxing vacation, while still looking after the safety of the “guests” who were really patients, and had all in one way or another demonstrated themselves to be whack-jobs in need of serious help.

At ten he was due in one of the private offices downstairs where the doctors met with their patients, followed by half an hour in his room, an hour in the dining room for lunch, an hour to read in the library or stroll around the gardens (remaining in sight of the building at all times), then an hour’s workout in the gym, which for Josh included time with the physical therapist to regain strength and flexibility in his arm and hand. After that there was an hour in one of the barns for art therapy, if you wanted it; Josh didn’t, and spent the time watching CNN on the t.v. in the lounge or reading the papers in the library instead. Then a group motivational session, featuring lectures and discussions led by a variety of mental health professionals, many of them quite distinguished; the place’s emphasis on privacy and discretion allowed Josh to skip these too if he wanted to, so he did. Then dinner, and t.v. or games in the lounge. It made for a pretty dull day, but the morning sessions with the psychiatrist were gruelling enough that he was almost glad to spend the rest of the time being bored out of his skull. He couldn’t really summon the energy to be interested in anything, anyway.

The therapy sessions were longer than he was used to from his other experiences: two hours minimum, and sometimes longer if the doctor thought they needed to go over. Josh felt a bit like a murder suspect being grilled by the police, and suspected the long sessions were intended to soften him up and wear him down. The analogy was pretty apt, he realized, though he couldn’t remember whether suicide was still on the books as a statutory crime in Virginia or the District of Columbia. 

On the first day they rounded up the usual suspects: the shooting, his PTSD. The doctor was surprised to hear that no, he hadn’t been experiencing any flashbacks to Rosslyn in the days or even weeks before his suicide attempt, or any afterwards, either. She looked a little disappointed, he thought; she’d probably glanced at his file and thought she could get this one over with quickly. He imagined she was there on retainer, and got paid whether she was seeing patients or not. Or maybe she’d been looking forward to hearing more about the most recent assassination attempt on an American president—which, of course, hadn’t really been an assassination attempt at all—and probing the psyche of the man who’d made the covers of Time, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report and People all in the same week, to find out what its effects on him had been. Josh knew that he was probably being unfair to the woman. He didn’t care. It was easier to critique his doctor than it was to turn that same kind of analytical searchlight on himself. That was her job. She was certainly getting paid enough for it.

What had he been thinking about, then, before the incident? What could he remember? Josh shifted a little in his seat, uncomfortably. “Um, the convention, I guess. The nomination. Bingo Bob running for president.” Sue Thornton looked at him sardonically. She really didn’t seem to want to buy the idea that the possibility of Bob Russell occupying the Oval Office might be enough to make a hardened politician like Josh Lyman slit his wrist, and half his arm with it. She was more interested in talking about how Josh had felt about leaving the White House, and what kind of impact Matt Santos’s loss was likely to have on his career. 

“Toby Ziegler lost every election he ever worked for until he joined the first Bartlet campaign,” Josh told her. She raised an eyebrow. 

“So you’re saying that failure doesn’t matter in politics?”

“It doesn’t matter if you’re good enough,” Josh said. 

“And you’re good enough?” 

He’d smiled at her then. “Oh yeah, I’m good enough.” 

She hadn’t realized the man had such devastating dimples—or such confidence in his professional skills. She was pretty sure that was the real thing; she knew bravado when she heard it, and she didn’t think she was hearing it now. But if the former White House Deputy Chief of Staff hadn’t been seriously worried about his future in politics after the convention, and hadn’t been suffering the aftereffects of having been shot at Rosslyn, why had he tried to kill himself less than a week ago?

* * *

Family was next. His feelings about his mother, his father? Loved ‘em both: great parents; they’d spoiled him rotten, but who ever complains about that? No, just his mom now; his father had died during the first Bartlet campaign. Yes, his death had been unexpected; he’d had cancer, but he’d been responding well to the treatment, and the prognosis had been good. Yes, he still missed him, but that was life, wasn’t it? He was lucky he’d had as much of his dad’s time as he had; he’d known plenty of people who’d lost theirs early, as teenagers or even little kids. That was tough. How often did he see his mother? Not as much as he’d like, certainly not as much as she’d like, but they emailed or talked on the phone once a week or so. Yes, of course she’d been upset when he’d been shot, very upset, she was his mother, what would you expect? How was she dealing with this? Well, he hadn’t actually told her yet. He was waiting till he was better and out of this place, so she wouldn’t worry as much. Yes, he still talked to her regularly; he’d called her last night. How did he feel about deceiving her like that? Well, he wouldn’t call it deception, exactly. He’d told her he was taking some time off to regroup after the campaign, that he was spending a few days in a place Leo had suggested, down in Virginia near the mountains, taking hikes, working out in the gym, eating good food. She’d been thrilled. A bit misleading? Not the full truth? He didn’t have a problem with that: he was a politician, remember? 

Does he have any siblings? No. How does he feel about that? It’s fine, really: he’s forty-five, that’s been his life, he’s used to it. He’d been lonely sometimes growing up, sure, but there’s always something, isn’t there? He’d had friends who fought with their brothers or sisters all the time. And there were advantages to being an only child and getting spoiled rotten. 

Girlfriends? Oof, a list of them. Quite a few women, yeah. Serious relationships? Well, some of them had lasted for a while. No, he’d never wanted to marry any of them. God, no. Would he like to be married, have children? Well, yeah, sure, he probably would, but he didn’t really expect to. He had a pretty demanding career, and the women he dated tended to have pretty demanding careers; it was hard to imagine how comfortable domesticity would fit into that picture. It wasn’t a big deal; he could have if he’d wanted to enough. Still could: he had his own fan club, did she know that? Yes, seriously! A handsome and powerful man. Okay, he’d stop smirking. . . .

* * *

“We’re not getting very far with this, are we, Josh?”

Josh sighed, and rubbed his hands over his face. He was so tired. He, who could go for weeks on three or four hours of sleep a night when he had to and still keep a spring in his step and a pretty clear head, felt like he could barely drag himself down the stairs in this place in the morning, or up them at night. The food was excellent, the bed was comfortable, the sleeping meds they doled out at bedtime were doing their job, but he was just so damn tired. Even the mandatory hike every morning and the gym workouts in the afternoon weren’t making much of a difference to his energy level. All this talking must be wearing him out. It seemed to have been going on forever. They were doing it twice a day now; Dr. Thornton had found out that he wasn’t attending either Art Therapy or Group Motivation in the afternoons, and had commandeered those timeslots for more sessions with her. She pointed out that she was only being ethical in putting his time to maximum use: the sooner they got this over with, the sooner he could leave, and the better off his bank account—or his insurance company’s—would be. He felt like the mountains outside, worn down by the steady drip and blow of all this talk about himself, until there was almost nothing left of what he used to be. He felt like a limp rag. He wanted to climb into bed and go to sleep and never have to wake up. He wanted to—

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just can’t think of anything more to say.”

“Do you want to know what I think?”

“Sure.” Well, that’s something new, he thought. Shrinks never tell you what they think.

“I think you know exactly what to say. I think you know exactly why you tried to kill yourself, why maybe you still want to. But you’re too scared to say it.”

“Why would I be scared?”

“You’re probably scared of losing control. You’re scared of what will happen if you put it into words, say it out loud. You’re used to keeping your guard up around everyone. You don’t want to break down in front of me, even though I’m a highly-trained professional and you’re paying through the nose to get me to sit and ask you questions and try to get you to talk to me.”

“I’m not afraid,” Josh protested, and knew he was lying even as he said it.

“Are you sure?” she asked. He bit his lip and dropped his eyes, but didn’t answer.

“Josh, I’ve seen lots of grown men cry. Lots of very successful, wealthy, sometimes even famous men break down and cry. It isn’t going to bother me. It isn’t going to make me think any less of you. And I’ll never tell another person about it. This is my job; you can trust me.”

“Maybe that’s why,” Josh muttered, still not raising his eyes. The doctor raised an eyebrow.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Because,” he burst out. “Because this is your job. Because I’m paying you. It’s like—like—paying for sex. I know you don’t give a damn about me, not really. You don’t even know me, and you can’t. You can’t afford to give a damn about a client; you have to keep your professional distance, that’s part of your job. You couldn’t do this every day if you didn’t. And I just can’t—can’t—” His voice shook, and he stopped abruptly.

The woman sitting across from him brushed a strand of hair back from her face, and sighed. This was the trouble, she thought, with the really intelligent ones, and this man was one of the most intelligent she’d worked with: they saw the whole picture. The most intelligent ones were usually the ones who felt things the most, but they were also the most isolated, by their very ability to see what other people didn’t and understand the things they’d be better off not understanding. She felt, more acutely than she had in a long time, the limitations of her profession, and was saddened by them.

“I do care, Josh,” she said quietly. “I do give a damn.” He jerked his head impatiently. “But I also understand what you’re saying. You don’t want to sit in that chair and cry by yourself. You want someone to cry with you.”

“No,” Josh protested, mortified. “No, I didn’t mean that. I don’t want that.”

“It’s pretty natural, Josh. We all of us want to be loved, you know. And I’m sure you are. I’m not saying you did this to try to hurt anyone else. I am saying that you need to learn to trust the people who love you, to trust them enough that you’ll let them cry with you when you need it.” 

“I—” Josh said, and stopped again. 

“Are you afraid they won’t? Afraid they’ll quit on you if you show them your weaknesses and not just your strengths? That they won’t care any more, that you’ll drive them away?”

“No,” Josh said, dropping his head back in his chair and running his hands over his face. “No, I’m not afraid of that.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’m sure.”

“Then let me ask you something else. Why aren’t you afraid of that?”

There was a long silence. Finally, in a very small voice, Josh said, “Because they’ve already left. I’ve already driven them away.”

* * *

Well, now we’re getting somewhere, Sue Thornton thought to herself. 

“Who?” she asked, her voice more gentle than it had been. “Who is ‘they’?”

Josh flushed. “I—” he started, and stopped.

“Go on,” she probed. They’d already covered a list of his romantic relationships in an earlier session; there hadn’t been anyone who seemed to raise the temperature in the conversation. He must have been leaving someone out.

“I—just, someone.”

“Just someone?”

“Yeah.”

“Come on, Josh. You can give me a few more clues than that.”

“Just—someone I used to work with.”

“A woman?”

“Yeah, a woman.” He gave a kind of self-conscious half-laugh. “I’m not gay.”

“A romantic interest, then?”

“I—no. Not—it wasn’t like that. We never went out or anything.”

“A friend, then?”

“Yeah.”

“A good friend?”

“A pretty good friend. I mean, I thought we were pretty good friends.”

“You never dated her?”

“No. I couldn’t; we worked together.”

“Together how?” 

“She worked for me.”

“On the Santos campaign?”

“No.”

“At the White House?”

“Yeah.”

“And that was why you didn’t date her? Or didn’t you find her attractive?”

“Attractive? God yes, she’s beautiful.”

“So the reason you didn’t date her was because she was working for you.”

“Yeah. She was my assistant, I couldn’t—and anyway, I don’t think she was interested in me that way.”

Sue Thornton raised an eyebrow again. She might know how to keep an emotional distance from her clients, but she was female and she wasn’t blind. Even dragged down by depression, she thought, Josh Lyman was an attractive man. His smile, when he used it, was really something. She thought it would be an odd woman who could spend a lot of time with the man and not be at least a little interested, though of course everyone’s tastes were different, and you couldn’t really tell what someone would be like to be with under normal circumstances when you were seeing them a few days after a suicide attempt. 

“Are you sure?” she said. He flushed again.

“Yeah, I—I’m sure. I wasn’t always; I thought, once—if we hadn’t had to work together—but that was a long time ago now, after I was shot, and—then things changed.”

“What changed?”

“I don’t know. She changed. Or maybe she didn’t; maybe I was wrong that there was ever anything . . . . Though there were other times . . . . But I could never do anything, never find out, and there was always some other guy she was talking about, or going out with. Most of them complete losers; she’s got terrible taste in men.”

“Really?”

“Insurance lobbyists. Republicans—short Republicans. You have no idea.” He was smiling a little, shaking his head, which intrigued his doctor.

“You seem very fond of her.” He stopped smiling at once.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “Yeah, I am. I really am.”

“So—tell me again why you never tried to find out what she thought about you?”

“I told you—she was my assistant.”

“There are ways around that, surely.”

“You don’t understand. You don’t understand what our jobs were like, what my job was like. It was—crazy. It was the White House. I was Deputy Chief of Staff; I had over a thousand people under me that I was responsible for keeping on track. I was the President’s chief domestic policy advisor, and the main guy he depended on to try to push our bills through Congress. I had to be on top of everything, every minute, all the time. And I couldn’t have done it without Donna. I’ve had other assistants—quite a few, actually—and she was just in a different category, a different class. It’s not that they weren’t good, they were, but—she’s smart—really smart—and she learns quickly, and I could depend on her to get me the information I needed when I needed it, and to do it right. To make sure I went where I needed to go, when I needed to be there. To tell me when I was going wrong on something. To keep track of—everything. And—”

“And what, Josh?” Sue probed.

“And—I don’t know how to explain this, but—she—just—”

“Just what, Josh?” 

“Just—made a difference. Just by being there.”

“Made a difference to how you did the job?”

“No,” he said softly. “I mean, yes, of course, but that’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean then, Josh? What did she make a difference to, besides the job?”

“To me,” he whispered. “Just—to me.”

* * *

“In other words,” Sue said gently, “you loved her.”

“Yeah,” Josh said quietly, looking down at his hands and fingering the edge of his cast where it was poking out of his sleeve. “Yeah, I did. I do.”

“You’ve known her how long?”

“Eight years. Just over eight years.”

“And how long have you felt like that about her?”

“Probably about eight years.”

“And what happened?”

“She—left.”

“Left?”

“Left. Got another job.”

“Why?”

“She wanted to do something different.”

“Was it a better job?”

“Yeah. I guess it was. She’s Bob Russell’s press secretary now, so yeah, I guess it was a better job.”

“So, what happened then?”

“When?”

“After she left. What did you do? Did you go out with her then?”

“No.”

“You asked her out and she said no?”

“No.”

“You didn’t ask her out?”

“No. I didn’t ask her out.”

“Why didn’t you, since you felt that way about her, and the thing that had been stopping you wasn’t there any more?”

“Because.”

“Because why?”

“Because I knew—she was angry with me.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“No.”

“How did you know, then?”

“I just knew.”

“Why did you think she was angry with you?”

He didn’t answer, but stopped fiddling with the cuff of his cast and pushed the injured arm down against his leg, holding it there, tightly, with his other hand.

“Why did you think she was angry with you, Josh?”

Still no answer.

“Why, Josh?” Josh started rubbing his right hand down across his left arm, hard. 

“Why, Josh?” He kept rubbing his hand across the cast under his sleeve, harder than before. Sue Thornton had a sudden image of that same hand holding a paring knife and gouging it into the arm under the cast. 

“Josh,” she said, with a new urgency in her voice. “Tell me. Why did you think Donna was angry with you?”

His whole attention seemed to be focused on his arm. 

“Josh,” Sue said, with all the authority she’d learned in twenty years in her profession, “Tell me. Now. Why did you think Donna was angry with you?”

Josh pushed himself abruptly out of the chair, smashing his arm down against the desk between them, his hand in a fist. The cast crashed against the edge of the desk with enough force to break any stitches that hadn’t healed yet, and snapped open inside his sleeve. “Because,” he shouted, his voice cracking, his face contorted with a pain beyond anything the blow to his arm could have caused. “Because I’d almost killed her. Isn’t that a good enough reason? I almost killed her. I sent her to Gaza. Gaza. She didn’t need to be there, but I sent her. I got her her ticket and her passport, and there was a bomb, she could have burned to death, she almost bled to death, she almost died. She had a pulmonary embolism, like my father; it killed him, it almost killed her. She’s got scars from here to there, on her chest, her leg, everywhere; a beautiful woman, scarred, do you think she’ll ever forgive me? She almost had brain damage. She almost bled to death. There was a bomb and she almost burned to death like my sister, she almost bled to death, don’t you understand? And I did it, I did it to her, I sent her there, me, I gave her her ticket and her passport, and there was a bomb, it blew up, and she got hurt, she bled. She was bleeding. Donna, bleeding. Severe bleeding, they said. Severe bleeding. Severe bleeding, don’t you understand?” His voice was cracking and he was gasping and sobbing, but even now, Sue saw, he couldn’t seem to allow himself the release of tears.

“Yes, Josh,” Sue said quietly. “I think I do understand.”

He squeezed his eyes shut for a minute, his chest heaving, his breath coming in ragged jerks. Then he opened his eyes again. “And now she’s working for Bob Russell,” he said. He took two steps across the room and swung his good arm at the window before Sue could hit the emergency button under her desk.

* * *

“Josh.”

Yeah?

“Josh.”

“Yeah?”

“Tell me what happened there.”

What happened where?

“Do you need some water?”

Yeah. Guess I do. “Thanks.”

“Okay. Now. Tell me what happened.”

“When?”

“While we were talking this morning. In my office. Before you took a swing at my window.”

Oh, that.

“What happened?”

“Yes, Josh, what happened. Why you did it. You’ve bruised your hand up quite nicely, and broken a couple of fingers. We use safety glass here, you know.”

That figures.

“Not your brightest move.”

Guess not.

“You were pretty upset there.”

Guess so.

“We need to talk about that, don’t we?”

Like you’re going to give me a choice? 

“I guess.”

“Do you remember what you were saying, before you took that swing at the window?”

More or less.

“You know, Josh, the non-verbal thing isn’t working for me right now. I asked if you remembered what you were saying before you hit the window?”

“More or less.”

“There were a couple of things there I’d like to hear more about.”

Naturally. 

“Okay.”

“What do you suppose they are?”

What is this, Read My Mind? 

“I don’t know.”

“You said something about your sister.”

Oh. That. 

“It’s interesting you haven’t mentioned her before. We did spend a couple of mornings talking about your family. At length, I’d have said. Exhaustively, even.”

So we did. 

“And the other one?”

“Bob Russell.”

* * *  
* * *


	3. Chapter 3: American Idyll

Part 3: American Idyll

Desperate with darkness, forsythia flames out.  
Madness, this: frail leaves of light, whipped wild with wind,   
thrust themselves into unwilling skies,  
force themselves on days that do not want to give up winter.  
Only the need to be known cuts deeper,  
the hunger not to be invisible.

Love is like that sometimes, and living always.

(“Forsythia”)

Light lies across your eyelids like apple-  
blossom on new-sprung lawns, like the lover  
I once longed to be, lying in your thoughts,  
your arms, so gently, dappled and dreaming only  
of summer skies and early apple-time.

(“Winter Light”—both from “New England Spring” by M. A. Kurtz)

 

(May 3, 2007)

Donna sat at her desk in her office, listening to the rain drumming against the window behind her. It was just after five on a spring evening, but the room around her was getting dark already. Only the reading lamp on her desk was casting a glow of warmth and light on the papers she was reading; she hadn’t bothered to get up to turn on any others. Glancing around the room now, she felt an odd pang of loneliness at the familiarity, and yet the utter strangeness, of it all. After three and a half months she should have been used being here like this, but she wasn’t. She sometimes wondered if she ever would be. 

It wasn’t the building the office was in that seemed so strange to her, although it was the White House. It wasn’t the idea that she had an office of her own in it, instead of a windowless little cubicle in the bullpen just outside the door. It was the office itself, and the memories it called up for her, no matter how hard she tried to keep them at bay. Because the room she was in was Josh’s office, and how could it ever seem like anything else?

It was so typical of him to have ended up in this room when he first came to the White House. As Deputy Chief of Staff he should have had the largest one after Leo’s, with an anteroom for his assistant—her—and plenty of space to spread out in and use to impress visiting Congressmen and Senators. But, typically, he hadn’t paid any attention to that sort of thing. Leo had told him to assign the offices, and he’d thought it made sense to give C.J. the biggest and best-located one so she could use it to talk to newspaper editors and journalists. She’d ended up in the room next to his for a while, while hers was being remodelled—they’d wanted to put in better wiring and cables, and the workers had found some other issues that had had to be dealt with, so it had taken months—but eventually she’d been installed in the big room near the press briefing room, which had the nice anteroom for Carol. Josh had taken the smaller one himself without a second thought to the finer distinctions of rank or prestige.

Bob Russell’s Deputy Chief of Staff, a man named Harold Porter, had different ideas. He’d taken one look at the place during their transition tour and claimed C.J.’s old office for his own. The Press Secretary could make do with the smaller, darker one at the end of the hall, and if her assistant had to perch in a cubicle in the bullpen outside—the Deputy’s bullpen—that was just fine with him. It would have been fine with Donna, too—she wasn’t worried about how big her office was, and there was an intercom that she had no difficulty using—if it hadn’t been this office. The one that she was beginning to think would always be Josh’s, not hers.

At the beginning that had bothered her differently than the way it bothered her now. She’d been worried about Josh—really worried—for a while after the convention. But then, when he didn’t return her calls, and when he continued to refuse, via Leo, every request that he come back and help the party with its campaign, her concern had been overtaken by disappointment, anger, and even—to her distress—shame. She hadn’t expected that. However upset she might have been with him when she’d left her job as his assistant, and however difficult she might have found her feelings about him during the campaign to manage or even pin down, she’d never expected him to do anything to make her ashamed of him. One of the things she’d always admired about him had been the way he consistently put the greater good—the needs of the President, the administration, the party—ahead of his own personal desires or disappointments; she couldn’t understand his failure to do it this time around. Will hinted more than once that he thought Josh just couldn’t take playing second fiddle in a campaign where he’d have to be on more or less equal footing with his former assistant. The thought angered and sickened her. The only way she could deal with it was to try not to think about him at all, which was a lot easier to do before she had to go to work in his old office every day.

But after a while, the daily reminders of the Josh she’d known began to outweigh the thoughts about the Josh Will thought he had become. It probably helped that he sent flowers. He didn’t know what room she was in, of course, but the mail clerk brought them to her desk the day they moved in. There was a note with them: “Congratulations and best wishes. Do good. Josh.” She’d almost missed what he’d scribbled on the other side: “Thanks for your calls last summer. Sorry I didn’t get back to you. You guys did great on your own.” It was a strange sort of apology, but it was enough to stir up emotions she’d rather have kept unstirred. She thought about picking up the phone to thank him but ended up writing an equally brief and uninformative note instead, dropping it in her outbox for her assistant to stamp and mail.

She didn’t know if he’d gotten the note. A few weeks after she sent it she saw an op-ed piece he’d written for the New York Times, urging the administration to take advantage of its historic opportunities—they’d won the House by a narrow margin, and had an even balance of seats in the Senate—to make significant advances in education and health care and a number of other areas, and, typically, suggesting that they should have done several of these things already and were spinning their wheels. According to the byline, he was now an Executive Director of the Fair Future Foundation, a liberal policy institute in New York. She’d heard on the grapevine that he was helping President Bartlet get his library established, and wondered if he was still living in Washington at all. A glance at the new phone book showed that he wasn’t listed at the Georgetown address anymore. For some reason she didn’t want to ask her assistant to check, so she googled his name herself, and after a few tries with the phone directories for different states found out that he was listed at an address in Connecticut, in Westport, his home town. She wondered if he had kept the apartment in Georgetown for a base when he was visiting D.C. but had the phone disconnected, or if he’d rented it out or sold it. The thought of his not living there anymore sent a pang through her that almost equalled the one she felt whenever she allowed herself to look around her office and remember how things used to be.

She tried not to do that, but the trying was getting harder instead of easier the way she’d thought it would. With every day she spent in the Russell White House, she missed the Bartlet one more. It wasn’t the old job she missed, of course: her new one was infinitely more challenging, exciting, and flattering. And yet . . . . She missed the way things used to be. She missed the people she’d worked with there before, the assistants—most of them had moved on—and, far more importantly, the senior staff. She missed Leo. She missed President Bartlet. Most of all, no matter how hard she tried to ignore it, she knew she missed Josh.

Except for Will, she didn’t know most of her new colleagues well at all. None of Bartlet’s staff had wanted to come back: Toby had taken his pardon gruffly and gone back to New York to teach at Columbia; C.J. had taken Danny Concannon and gone back to California, where she was planning to do nothing except lie by a pool in the sun and sip margueritas and paint her nails for six months before even thinking about what was going to come next. Annabeth had stayed at the White House during the campaign, but surprised everyone afterwards by starting to show up at events on Leo’s arm, and it looked as though she was very happy to make looking after Leo her next full-time job. The key White House positions had been filled by old connections of President Russell’s, or people who’d brought themselves to his attention during the campaign. The party warhorses who’d had to be rewarded had all been given positions in the Cabinet, or ambassadorships at comfortable embassies overseas.

But it wasn’t the familiar faces of the old staff she missed so much as it was the way they approached things, the way things had been done. Josh had been right in his New York Times piece—the Russell staff had fumbled their opening and had been spinning their wheels ever since. They’d spent the transition planning the inaugural celebrations more than the actual work of their administration. They hadn’t vetted their candidates for a couple of Cabinet positions very carefully, with the result that they’d been taken by surprise by things that had come out after they’d put the names forward, and had had to scramble to find replacements. It had been embarrassing, and a huge waste of opportunity: the result had been that they’d delayed proposing any legislation for weeks, and when they had put a bill forward, it had been the most innocuous imaginable. “We need a sure win,” Will had said, gruffly. It had been that, all right—an “anti-crime” bill that had put forward funding for more police officers on big-city streets and called for tougher sentences for a variety of crimes, including rape and domestic violence. Those last provisions—which Donna made sure were much touted in the press—were gratifying to the women’s caucus, but really the bill could as easily have been proposed by a Republican President as a Democratic one, and was equally acceptable to both parties, a sure win indeed. Donna knew what Josh would have said about it—in fact, she knew what he was saying, as he’d had another op-ed piece in the Times and one in the Post, and had appeared on several political talk shows more than once to say it. She found the whole thing deeply embarrassing. Not that there was anything she could have done about it; she’d been included in the discussions at only the most superficial level. Will had made it quite clear to her that, regardless of what C.J. might have been able to do at times, in this White House the Press Secretary’s role was to present policy, not formulate it. She was welcome—even encouraged—to speak up about how to show the President and his bills in the best light, but for anything beyond that, there were lines she shouldn’t cross. 

So here they were, almost four months into their first term, their honeymoon all but wasted, and she was reading through the language of the bill they were planning to send to the Hill next week and finding nothing more than another plodding, pedestrian, safely middle-of-the-road (“When has the middle of the road ever been a safe place to be?” she could almost hear Josh shouting) piece of legislation, this one designed to provide greater access—they were calling it “universal access”—to computers and the internet in schools across the country. It was the sort of thing no one could really object to, though Donna found herself wondering whether first-graders in inner-city slums really needed more screen time than they were already getting on their t.v.’s at home, and whether the money wouldn’t be better spent to hire more teachers and cut classroom sizes so the children would actually get to interact one-on-one with a not-too-stressed-out, semi-educated adult for part of their day.

However, Will was billing this proposal as their big “Education Initiative” and wanted her to whip up enthusiasm for it in the press, so she was biting back her questions and studying the text now, before it went to the Hill next week. She didn’t really need to do that—Porter had given her a digest of it to work from—but old habits died hard. Josh would have known every sentence and every clause by heart before talking to the press about anything, or taking it to the Hill. He would have expected her to know them pretty thoroughly too, just so she’d understand what he was going on about when he was on one of his rants, and could help him keep track of all his notes and revisions as the bill was worked and reworked and gone over with a fine-tooth comb for inconsistencies or poor wording that might create problems in its passage through Congress, or later, if it became law.

Josh—she shook her head, trying not to think of him sitting at this desk, in this chair, working half the night or more to make sure everything the White House did was the best it could possibly be. But she couldn’t shake him out of her thoughts. Whatever had happened before she left her old job, whatever had happened on the campaign, she missed him. She missed his dedication, his intellect, his passion for his work, his conviction that every day they spent in that historic building was an opportunity and an obligation to try to make the world a better place. And, for all her efforts not to, she knew she just missed him. She missed his face, his voice, his smile, his hand hovering over the small of her back. His teasing conversation, his quick—even if undependable—concern. Even his ego. Even the way he took her for granted. Even the way he yelled her name . . . .

Goodness, she must be tired. She didn’t really miss all those things, surely? She shook her head again and tried to turn her attention back to the bill; she wanted to finish up so she could go home. It wasn’t five-thirty yet, but the Russell staff generally left around six most nights, and earlier on Fridays. The President believed in keeping what he called civilized hours, and was civilized enough to expect his staff to keep them with him as much as possible. He believed in weekends and vacations, too. She was expecting to spend Saturday and Sunday at home, on call if she was needed of course, but not likely to be needed. Other than her weekday press briefings, she hadn’t really been called on to do all that much; they’d been lucky so far, and there hadn’t been any major crises in the country they’d had to respond to. If she wanted to go away for the weekend, most of the time she could. She hadn’t bothered to, though; there wasn’t really any place she wanted to go, any one she wanted to see. Except . . . .

For the third time, Donna shook herself; this time she made a little noise of exasperation, too, and managed to force her mind to take in what the fine print in the last pages of the bill in front of her was saying. She read for a few minutes. Then she stopped, blinking. Had she really read that right? She’d been having trouble concentrating a few minutes ago; she must have missed something that would explain it. She turned back several pages, and started again. And read it again. And then again. And then again.

After a while, Donna got up slowly out of her chair and started to pack up her things. She felt abstracted, not really thinking about what she was doing but about what she ought to do. She ought to phone Will. No, he wouldn’t appreciate that—now that he was C.O.S. he protected his time. He’d tell her to talk to Porter. She ought to talk to Porter; he was in charge of Legislative Affairs, and the obvious go-to person for this. But she wasn’t that sure of what she thought she’d seen—she was no lawyer, after all—and Porter made her uncomfortable. He had a way of talking to her that made her feel as if he was just waiting for her to put a foot wrong. She suspected he didn’t like the fact that she knew Will better than he did and had a more secure relationship with him—though she wasn’t really sure anymore what her relationship with Will was, if she ever had been. Or perhaps he just disliked working with someone with as little prior experience at the senior level as she had. He had a way of talking about the assistants when he was around her that always made her hackles rise. “Oh, I’m waiting for Alice to do that. Of course, I’ll probably have to wait all day—you know what these assistants are like.” If Will had noticed it, he wasn’t showing any signs, and Donna didn’t want to draw it to his attention if he hadn’t. But she didn’t really want to give Porter any more opportunities than he already had to call her qualifications into question or to make her feel like a fool. And in any case, Porter had undoubtedly gone home for the night already. As—she could see as she walked past the Chief of Staff’s office—had Will.

The rain was making the streets black and slippery, catching all the lights on the cars and reflecting them in a confused and confusing tangle that matched her thoughts as she drove home. It was knocking the blossoms off the trees—spring had come late this year—and strewing pink and white petals across the pavement in front of her house and the steps to the front door. She parked her car and picked her way through them, trying not to slip in her high heels and not to let the sight of all that wasted beauty make her feel any lower or bluer than she did already. 

Inside, she kicked her shoes off and switched on her t.v. before heading to the kitchen to put on the kettle for a comforting cup of something hot. She was in the mood for tea, not coffee. She was digging in her cupboard to see if she had anything herbal and soothing left when she heard his voice coming from her living room. She stood for a moment, frozen, her hand poised halfway between the cupboard and the counter with a brightly colored box of teabags in it. Then she turned and all but ran to the next room, where she dropped onto the couch and stared at the set. The kettle started to sing in the kitchen, but she didn’t hear it. She couldn’t hear anything except his voice filling her room.

He was sitting at a table with a handful of other commentators, all talking at once, but it was his voice that rose out of the babble with the most conviction, his gestures that were the most arresting, his arguments that were backed up with the most solid facts and figures and made the most sense. His criticism of Russell was, if anything, more fierce than ever. Donna watched him hungrily. When that segment finished she kept watching, waiting and hoping for him to come back. 

Finally she realized he wasn’t going to and turned the set off. She sat there for another minute, listening to the kettle screaming in the kitchen while she hugged her knees, trying to hold back the ache that seemed to be pushing against the inside of her skin and trying to get out. It was the same ache she’d been ignoring all day, all week, all . . . . She didn’t know how long she’d been ignoring it. She just knew she couldn’t keep it in any longer; it was unbearable. She had to see him again. She had to. She had to talk to him. She had to ask him what he thought, what she should do. It didn’t really surprise her that she needed to do that; she’d needed it for a long time now, however hard she’d tried to ignore what everything inside her had been screaming at her it wanted her to do. She didn’t really care any more that he hadn’t tried to promote her out of her old job; it didn’t really matter any more what he’d thought about working with her during the campaign. She needed him. She’d always needed him, and nothing had felt quite right without him for a very long time. She’d left her job with him, but she’d never expected him to leave his job too. She’d never expected things to change this much, that she couldn’t find him just down the hall if she wanted to, in that office she’d just left, where, however irrationally, she’d felt he was always supposed to be. His voice and his picture on the t.v. weren’t enough—not even close to enough. She couldn’t get through another day without being in the same room with him, without seeing him and talking to him again the way they used to. It was just for work, she told herself. It was just because she trusted his opinion more than anyone else’s when it came to this sort of work. She knew she was lying and she didn’t really care.

She had the weekend free; the likelihood that anything would come up that required a White House press briefing was small, and if it did, she had a good deputy. She went to the kitchen and turned off the kettle, then went to her computer and brought up the phone directory for Westport and there he was, just as he’d been the last time she’d looked, with an address and telephone number listed for anyone to find. She looked at the number, knowing she should call and afraid of what might happen if she did. He might be out, or she might talk to him for a few minutes and then he’d put her off, maybe arrange to see her the next time he was in D.C. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t even close to enough. 

It was an impulsive, crazy thing to do, she knew, but it wouldn’t be the first time she’d done something crazy and impulsive that ended up taking her to Josh. She pulled her smallest suitcase out of her closet, threw a few things into it, and headed for her car. Twenty minutes later she was on the Beltway, travelling east and north.

* * *

Six and a half long, tired hours later she pulled up to the curb in front of what she assumed was his house. It was after 1:00 a.m. on a dark, wet night, but there were lights on in the house, which didn’t surprise her—he’d always been a nightowl, and she’d been counting on his still being up. The lights in the house together with the streetlamp across the road gave enough light for her to get a good impression of what the place was like. She’d printed a street map of Westport off Yahoo!Maps, so she was pretty sure this was the right address, but she sat in the car, staring in surprise. Something stirred inside her, making her feel lonelier than she’d ever felt in her entire life before. 

She’d been driving for several minutes through a surprisingly rural-feeling neighborhood of houses that were very much like it: turn-of-the-century or older grey-shingled or white-frame New England-style, family-sized homes set in big, spreading lawns and gardens, many of them almost invisible to their neighbors. At least half had flags waving patriotically by the front door. This one was smaller than most of the others, a quaint-looking Cape Cod whose multi-paned windows poked in old-fashioned dormers out of its shingled roof, and whose welcoming little porch was overgrown with a woody vine that looked suspiciously like roses. Thick bushes massed protectively around its foundations—hydrangea, she guessed, or lilac or rhododendron, though it was hard to tell that early in the season—and two ancient-looking apple trees stood in the front lawn, their bark glistening silver in the lamplight. The grass beneath them was scattered with little flowering bulbs—tiny little bluebells and crocus and daffodils. It was the most home-like place she could imagine. It made her feel unutterably lost and homeless. 

She couldn’t imagine Josh living someplace like this. This quaint, rose-covered cottage was as far removed from his Georgetown apartment as anything she could think of, and farther still from the endless anonymous hotel rooms where he’d been perfectly content to spend half his time. She double-checked the address on the map, but she knew she hadn’t made a wrong turn; this had to be it. She couldn’t understand it—unless, of course, he wasn’t living here by himself. That must be the answer: he must be living with someone, someone who meant enough to him that he was willing to adapt to her sense of style and hole himself up here in this old-fashioned, country-style place, so unlike anything he would choose for himself. Living with someone. That was a possibility Donna hadn’t even considered before. What kind of idiot was she going to make of herself, showing up in the middle of the night, unannounced, at the door of a man who was living with another woman? She should just start the car and drive back to town and look for a motel, and then drive back to D.C. tomorrow. But she wanted so much to see him. Needed to see him. She’d been aching with impatience to get here every minute of the long drive; she couldn’t bear the thought of turning around and leaving without getting even a few minutes to talk to him.

There were lights on in the downstairs windows, and by the front door. A man walked across one of the rooms, and even with the light behind him she recognized him instantly. She couldn’t stand it any longer—let his girlfriend think what she wanted, let Josh think what he wanted, it didn’t matter, she had to see him, now. She climbed out of the car, opened the little gate in the fence—the place even had a white picket fence, for goodness’ sake—and made her way up the stepping-stone path to ring the bell.

There was a pause. Then she heard a chair scraping back, footsteps crossing a floor. The door opened, and she was looking at him. His face registered complete shock, and for a moment he just stood there holding the door, his mouth open and his eyes wide. Then his expression changed, and something like fear washed over it.

“Donna?” he said, his voice cracking. He let go of the door and took a step towards her. “What’s the matter? What’s happened? Are you all right?”

She stepped forward and said, “Oh, Josh,” and suddenly his arms were around her and her face was down against his shoulder and she was shaking. She was afraid she was going to cry: oh God, she didn’t want to cry. He squeezed more tightly. 

“What is it, Donna? What’s the matter? Tell me. Just tell me.” She couldn’t seem to stop shaking. 

“Has something happened? Has someone hurt you?” She shook her head, her face still buried on his shoulder, and felt him relax a little. 

“Is it your parents? Has something happened to them?” She shook her head again. 

“What is it then? What’s happened?”

She shivered all over, and forced herself to try to get some control. Gradually her breathing steadied out. She shivered again, but pulled back a little from his arms, blinking back the tears that were still threatening to fall. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, trying to smile. “I honestly don’t know where that came from. I must be tired or something. It’s a long drive.”

He looked at her bemusedly. “You drove? From D.C.?”

“Yes, I did. Six and a half hours. The traffic around the city slowed me down.”

“You must have been speeding the rest of the way then,” he said, smiling a little. 

“I wasn’t going any faster than anybody else. Or not too much faster, anyway.”

“And you always tell me to slow down.”

“That’s different.”

“Naturally. But, Donna—why were you driving here? Why here? Why now? It’s the middle of the night.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I—could we go in? I’m getting kind of cold.”

He looked startled, then laughed. They were standing on the threshold of the door, which was still wide open. “Yeah. Good idea. Come in.” He stepped back, letting go of her so she could walk inside. She glanced around, feeling suddenly awkward and self-conscious. It was a good thing his girlfriend hadn’t come down and found her in his arms like that, but what would she do if the woman appeared now? And how on earth was she going to explain herself? Now that her almost primal need to see him—and, more, to touch him and be held by him—had been met, she was starting to realize how completely inexplicable her sudden appearance really was. 

“What a nice place,” she said, inanely. She was standing in a comfortably wide entranceway with arches on either side leading to what seemed to be pleasantly large rooms, a pretty staircase in front of her with an old-fashioned newel post and railing that climbed partway up, then bent and kept going across the far side of the hall. Under the stair and facing the door was a little alcove with a built-in seat. The walls were a fresh yellow, the woodwork bright white, the floors warm oak. It all looked, she thought, just the way she would have imagined from the outside: nicely renovated but full of old-fashioned charm.

He was smiling at her, looking, she thought, almost shy.

“Thanks,” he said. “There’s still not much furniture, I’m afraid. I’ve almost finished the painting, though.”

Donna looked at him as if he’d grown another head. “You’ve almost finished doing what?”

“The painting. The walls—they were pretty bad when I moved in. Wallpaper, a lot of it pink, and this really creepy green.”

“You’re doing the painting yourself?”

There was that shy look again. “Yeah. It’s nice. Kind of calming, you know? Takes me forever, though; I’ve been working on it for almost six months now.”

“Your girlfriend must be a very patient woman.”

Now it was his turn to look at her strangely. “Who?”

“Your girlfriend.” Donna felt proud of herself, working that in like that. If it was obvious that she knew he was with someone and wasn’t surprised about it, they couldn’t think she’d had anything in mind except political concerns when she’d driven up here so suddenly like this.

He was grinning a little now. “Really? Tell me about her; you seem to know something I don’t.”

“Oh come on, Josh. You can’t tell me she isn’t patient, if she’s putting up with you taking six months to do the painting, instead of hiring a pro and having it over with in a couple of weeks.”

The dimples were in full play now. “Yes, I suppose she’d have to be. But why do you seem so convinced that she exists at all?”

Donna stared at him. “You mean, you’re not living here with someone?”

“Well, not that I’m aware of. Do you really think any woman would be willing to live with this little stuff?”

Donna’s focus had been entirely on him. Looking around with more attention now, she realized that the rooms she could see into were, in fact, almost completely unfurnished. In the living room to her left there was a deep couch opposite a fireplace, a standing lamp, the t.v.—sitting on its cardboard box—and a few photos propped on the mantelpiece; it was a large room, but otherwise it was empty. The arch to her right opened into what seemed to be intended as the dining room. The only furniture in it was a table and a couple of chairs. Josh’s laptop was open on the table, which except for a reading lamp was completely covered with books and papers. The cords for the computer and the lamp trailed across the floor. It did not, in fact, look like an arrangement any woman would put up with for long. 

Her smile was bigger than she meant it to be. “I hadn’t had a chance to notice, but now that you mention it, it does seem unlikely.”

He tipped his head and looked at her quizzically. “Why were you so sure I was living with someone?”

“This place. The way it looks outside—the house, the garden. Especially the garden. I couldn’t imagine you choosing a place like this by yourself. I don’t know what I was expecting, exactly—maybe a loft in an old mill or something. Just not this.”

He smiled again, but didn’t offer any explanations. “Well, I wasn’t exactly expecting you to show up on my doorstep in the middle of the night, either. You’re going to have to tell me what you’re doing here, you know, but could I get you some coffee first?”

“That would be heaven,” Donna said appreciatively. “The coffee at the gas stations on the New Jersey Turnpike sucks, it seriously sucks. And I need to use your bathroom.”

“It’s through that door, on the left. Did you bring a bag or anything?”

“It’s in the car.”

“Give me your keys; I’ll bring it in.”

* * *

Ten minutes later they were sitting beside each other on the couch in the living room, cradling their coffee mugs. The French press was on a tray on the floor between them. “I guess I should get a coffee table sometime,” Josh said. “I’ve never really missed having one before. I don’t have a lot of visitors here.”

“I thought you’d have friends here still.”

“Parents of friends, mostly. I’ve been to dinner at a few people’s houses. They don’t expect me to invite them back.”

“That’s bad, you know.”

“I bring flowers! They’re taking pity on a bachelor who isn’t supposed to be able to cook for himself; if I started handing out dinner invitations, I’d lose the sympathy factor right away, and they’d probably think I was gay. I fill them in on how my mother’s doing and tell tales of the White House; I earn my keep.”

Donna laughed over the edge of her coffee mug, but thought how strange it was to think of Josh dining out on tales of the White House instead of being dined by Congressmen and Senators as part of his job there. She also wondered how many single women were paraded in front of him at those dinners, and whether he’d gone out with any of them. Just because he wasn’t living with anyone didn’t mean there wasn’t someone he was involved with, or interested in.

Somewhere between Baltimore and the New Jersey Turnpike she’d stopped even trying to lie to herself about what was really driving her to see him.

“You’re enjoying your work now?” she asked, avoiding that subject.

“Yeah, I am. We’ve got a good group of people at the Foundation. And when President Bartlet’s got his library going, he’s going to be more involved. We should be able to get some really interesting projects going then. It’s mostly been domestic issues we’ve been focused on so far, but I’m hoping to expand our range to get some conferences going about starting to tackle some of the problems in the Third World. There are so many that just don’t have to be problems. We’d like to sidestep the political process and get individuals more engaged with solving them. There’s so much wealth in this country; if we could just get more of the people who own it to take a personal interest, we could really make a difference.”

“With our party in control of the House and the White House, you could be working through legislative channels, Josh.”

“Yeah, and look where that’s gotten us. Four months in office, and what has Russell done? He has all the cards, and he’s throwing them away. Where’s the big education bill, Donna? Health care reform? Campaign finance? Full rights for gays in the military? Aid to undeveloped nations? Where’s anything except a few easy, feel-good bills that would have passed just as easily if Vinick had won and the Republicans had taken the House?”

Donna dropped her eyes, and sighed, the corners of her mouth turning down unhappily. He was right, of course—it was exactly what she’d been thinking. She’d wanted to talk to him about it, but what could she say? She bent over, picked a spoon off the tray on the floor and started stirring her coffee so she wouldn’t have to look him in the face.

Josh noticed the change in her manner immediately, and stopped. “I’m sorry, Donna,” he said in a gentler tone of voice. “I didn’t mean to get going on that. I know you must think differently. And besides, that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to know why you’re here, and why you seemed upset when you arrived. That’s all we need to worry about right now.” 

Donna stirred her coffee again, keeping her eyes on her drink. “I saw you on t.v. tonight.”

“I see you on t.v. lots of nights.”

“Not that many nights.”

“No. It could be more. You look good, though. You do a good job.”

“Thanks,” she said, smiling a little. “So do you.”

“So—what does my being on t.v. have to do with your being here?”

She sighed. “I’d been worried about something all day and thinking of you, wishing I could talk to you about it. When I went home and saw you on the t.v., I went and packed a bag and got in my car and came.”

He shook his head, smiling. “How did you know where to come?”

“You’re listed in the phone directory; I got it off the internet.”

“My phone number’s listed too. It would have been a lot easier to call, wouldn’t it?”

She bit her lip. She didn’t really want him to know how much she’d just wanted to see him again.

“I—I wasn’t comfortable talking about this on the phone.” Well, that was true enough. “I wanted to see you. This seemed the quickest way.”

There was concern in his eyes now. “What was it you weren’t comfortable talking on the phone about?”

Donna got up and crossed the room to the entranceway, where he’d put her suitcase down. She opened it, took out a manila envelope, and walked back to stand in front of Josh. “This,” she said. He raised his eyebrows, but opened the envelope, took out the papers, and started to read.

* * *

Donna leaned back against the sofa cushions and watched him as he read. She’d always loved watching him work; he had an intensity even when he was reading that she found utterly compelling. And this was the first chance she’d had to really study him since she’d arrived. He seemed older, she thought now, though not in a bad way. There were a few lines she didn’t recognize in his face, and some grey hairs just starting to appear in his thick curls, but there was also something quieter and calmer about him that impressed her; he seemed more relaxed and at ease than she’d seen him in a long time. Paradoxically he was also tidier: although his shirt was a little crumpled, as she’d expect at that hour, his sleeves were still neatly buttoned at his wrists. She knew when he got to the worrisome part of the bill: his shoulders tensed and he leaned forward a little, his jaw tightening and that muscle in his cheek starting to work. He seemed to read that page over several times, then flipped back and looked at something else. Then he relaxed a little and read to the end, turning the pages more quickly than before.

When he was finished, he put it down on his lap and looked at her. “I see why you were worried,” he said. “That’s potentially pretty risky language they’ve got in there. It’s open to too many interpretations.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“You thought right. I’m surprised nobody else there caught it; it’s a good thing you did. It probably would have gotten worked out in committee, of course, but your guys would have looked pretty bad if it had been a Republican who caught it. And if for some reason it had slipped by, it could seriously compromise privacy rights in quite a few areas, not just school computers and teenagers’ internet use.”

“That’s what I thought. It’s been bothering me all day.”

“You’re very good at this.”

“I had a very good teacher, Josh.”

He turned his head quickly, dropping his eyes back to the papers in his lap. Following his gaze, Donna was startled to see his hands gripping the papers tightly. She looked back up at his face, and even in profile could see that his mouth was trembling a little and he was breathing hard. She had no idea what was the matter.

“Josh?” she said, alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

He shook his head and half-laughed. “Nothing,” he said, his voice sounding a little rough. “It’s all right. Will doesn’t seem to be doing the job he should now, though, if he’s letting language like this go through.”

“Will?” Donna said, totally bemused. “Why are you talking about Will?”

“You said you had a good teacher—you meant him, didn’t you?”

“I meant you, Josh. How could I possibly have meant anyone else? You taught me everything. Everything. You know you did. All I knew when I showed up in that office in Manchester was typing and filing and how to answer the phone. I hadn’t finished my college degree, I was trying to bluff my way into a job, and you saw right through me and gave me a chance anyway. You brought me to the White House. You took time most people would never have taken to show me things I’d never have seen without you, explain things I’d never have had a chance to understand. And now I’m the White House Press Secretary. I’m there, in your old office, doing C.J.’s old job. I still can’t really believe it, but I think about you every day, and I’m so incredibly grateful. . . .” 

She broke off, because she saw his face working more than before.

“Josh?” she said, bewildered. She reached out a hand and touched his arm. “What’s the matter, Josh? What did I say? What’s the matter?”

He took a deep breath and wiped a hand over his face. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. Nothing’s the matter; it’s fine. I’m sorry.”

“What did I say? Why did that upset you?” Her hand was still on his arm. He put his other hand over it for a minute and squeezed it tightly, then dropped it. She hesitated, then took her hand away too.

“It’s okay, Donna. I’m not upset. It just—that meant a lot to me. More than you can know.” He was looking down at his hands, fingering the cuff of his left sleeve.

“Oh, Josh.” She thought she was beginning to understand a little. “I’m sorry. I should have said those things to you when I left.”

“It’s okay.”

“It wasn’t okay though, was it? I shouldn’t have left like that, after all those years, after all you’d done for me. I should have talked to you about it, explained why I needed to go. I shouldn’t have left you thinking I wasn’t grateful, that I didn’t care.”

“I thought you were angry with me.” His voice was low.

She had been angry with him, but she’d realized long ago how petty her reasons had been.

“I—I wasn’t myself that fall, Josh. It’s no excuse, but I had a hard time after the explosion, after Gaza. I tried to come back to work too early, I think, and I felt so tense, so stressed. I was having trouble sleeping—”

“Oh, God, Donna,” he said, his eyes going wide. He looked horrified. She didn’t let him finish.

“It’s okay, Josh. It didn’t last that long. I talked to someone—to a couple of people—and I felt better afterwards. But I felt different, too. I realized I couldn’t go on and on in the same job, doing the same things, every day. I wanted to grow. I felt like I could do more, and I wanted to find out if I was right, if I really could or not. I’d been wanting to do something different for quite a while, really, but after the bombing, I just wanted it so badly, I couldn’t wait any longer. I felt like I had to do something just for me. I suppose I was angry with you, a little, for not giving me more responsibility, but I’ve realized for a long time now how unfair that was.” That wasn’t all she’d been angry about, but she wasn’t going to mention her other reasons now. “It wasn’t your job to find better things for me to do. That was my job.”

“I’m sorry,” Josh said, sounding as stricken as he looked. “I’m so sorry, Donna. I should have seen what you needed. I should have helped you.”

“You had too many other things to worry about, Josh.”

“I should have seen what you needed. I should have seen—I can’t believe I didn’t see—if you still weren’t well, if you needed help, after Gaza—it should have been me you were talking to. I should have found you the right people to talk to.”

Donna sighed; she couldn’t help it. That had been what had hurt the most—that Josh hadn’t seen or guessed that she needed help then. She’d been so aware of the changes in him after Rosslyn, and so concerned about them; in the strange state of mind she’d been in when she’d been hurt herself, she’d wanted desperately for him to notice that something was wrong with her and step in to make things right. But that was Josh, she’d finally decided—totally undependable for that kind of thing. He could blow you away by unexpected gestures sometimes, but you couldn’t rely on him for them. He could fly halfway around the world to sit by your bedside when you were hurt, and then, when you came home, hardly notice whether you were in the room or not, or what sort of state you were in when you were there. 

“It’s okay, Josh,” she said, trying not to let her sadness show. “I talked to Kate Harper. She helped a lot.”

He shook his head. “It should have been me. I’m so sorry, Donna. I’m so sorry.” His voice was tight with anger that she knew was directed, not at her, but himself.

“It’s okay,” she said again, more firmly this time. But he wasn’t ready to let it drop.

“Did you—are you—” He had to stop to clear his throat. “Was it—did you get—what— I got, after Rosslyn?” He wasn’t looking at her, and although his voice was very low she could hear the current of anger in it still. The question startled her. 

“No, oh no. It was never as bad as that, Josh. I was just upset, and under a lot of stress. Kate said that was normal, after an experience like that—most people feel some sort of effect. They’d warned me about it in the hospital, actually; I recognized what was happening. I just needed to talk it out a bit, and then I was fine.”

“You’re sure? You weren’t having flashbacks to the explosion?”

“No. Really. Most people don’t, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. But—you’re sure? You’re sure you’re okay now, Donna? Sometimes—sometimes these things can happen in different ways, ways you don’t expect. You might not be reliving the explosion, so you might think you’re fine. But if you feel you’re under a lot of stress, if there’s stuff that’s bothering you and you’re not paying attention to it, thinking it will just go away—you want to watch out for that.”

Donna felt her eyes sting. Josh might not have been there for her when she needed him, but she was incredibly touched by his concern now.

“Of course I’m under stress, Josh,” she said lightly, trying to reassure him. “I’m the White House Press Secretary. But it’s nothing like that.”

“You’re sure? You’re really sure? You don’t ever feel like—you don’t ever think you—might—might,”—he was having a hard time getting the words out—“do something? To—hurt—yourself?” His face had gone white and beaded with sweat, and the muscle was working in his cheek again. Donna remembered that terrible Christmas when he’d put his hand through a window, and shivered. Tears started to push behind her eyes, hovering, getting ready to fall at any moment.

“No, Josh, really. I’m all right. I got help when I needed it, and I didn’t get PTSD. Kate gave me the name of a good therapist, and I talked to her a few times too. You don’t have to worry about me. Really.”

“You’re sure?” he asked again, still sounding urgent. There was an intensity in his eyes that Donna didn’t really understand. “Please be sure, Donna. Because I can’t bear to think of you, going through that, doing that. . . .”

She lost the battle with her tears then, and felt them start to slip down her face. “I’m sure, Josh,” she whispered. “I can’t bear to think of you going through that, either. I’m so sorry you had to, that Christmas . . . .”

“It’s all right; don’t worry about that. That doesn’t matter. Don’t cry, Donna; please don’t cry. I can’t stand for you to cry.” He reached out to wipe her face, brushing the tears from each cheek gently. His eyes were burning into hers. She felt her eyes glowing back, her skin flaming where he’d touched it, every part of her catching on fire in response. She made a little noise and shifted, moving closer to him. He paused then, his hand still on her face, staring into her eyes for what seemed like forever. Then he began slowly, almost reverently to caress her cheeks, the angles of her jaw, the sides of her neck. Slowly and gently he ran his fingers along her collar bone, brushed them along the scoop neck of her top, then stroked them back again along her collar bone and slipped them behind her head, running them through her hair. It felt as if he was trying to memorize the shape of her face, her head, her throat, but all the while his eyes never left hers. 

“You do know I love you, don’t you?” he asked huskily, a catch in his voice, before tipping her head up and pressing her mouth into his.

* * *

Donna woke to the steady sound of Josh’s breathing; the warm whisper of his breath on her neck; the heavy, comforting weight of his arm thrown over her. She opened her eyes, blinking drowsily. The rain had stopped in the night, and sunlight was pouring through the partially-opened blinds, flooding the room. Through their slats she could see the first pink buds of apple blossoms beginning to unfold in the tree beside the window, and she could hear birds singing in its branches.

She lay that way for several minutes, looking around her as much as she could without moving and disturbing Josh. The room was exactly what she might have expected from the style of the house: tucked into a corner under the sloping roof, with a pair of dormer windows on one wall and a single one on the other, it was full of interesting angles and odd nooks and corners. Someone—she couldn’t really believe Josh had done it himself—had painted the walls and ceilings white, which gave the space an airy feel, and made the low slope of the roof seem sheltering instead of oppressive. There was a window seat under one of the dormer windows, a handsome chest of drawers against one wall, the big bed, and not much else except light and an expanse of softly gleaming hardwood floor. Even though she’d seen the outside of the house, the simplicity of the space and its old-fashioned charm surprised her. She lay there savoring its sweetness and loving with every atom of her being the man lying beside her. She would never have imagined him in a place like this. It had been years since she had imagined herself in a place like this. And yet it all seemed so right, so completely perfect. She wanted to wake up like this every morning for the rest of her life. 

She felt almost dizzy with happiness, drunk with it; she could feel it effervescing inside her like bubbles rising through champagne. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d woken next to a man feeling like this: that she hadn’t just been having sex, she’d been making love. Sometime in that first year with Alan, probably, but there was no comparison between the thing she’d called love then and what she felt now. And she knew she’d never felt as if she were really and truly being made love to the way she had last night. She’d had good partners before, experienced partners, skilled and considerate partners, but she’d never, in her entire life, been touched and kissed and held in a way that made her feel so completely, so totally loved. So cherished. Her climaxes had been deep and thrilling, but even in the need of the moment she’d felt they were entirely secondary to this bigger, deeper, infinitely more thrilling, more satisfying thing that was blossoming around her. If she hadn’t had one, she honestly wouldn’t have cared. Not that there had been any question of that: Josh had seemed to care about almost nothing else. She remembered the words of the old traditional English marriage vows she’d heard once and never forgotten: “With my body I thee worship.” She’d always wondered what that would be like, to feel, not just admired or desired or skillfully pleasured, but worshipped. She’d found out last night.

She turned herself a little so she could look at him. At his beautiful, beloved face; his strong, reassuring arms; his broad, comforting chest with the faded but discomforting marks on it that brought to mind that terrible night she could still hardly bear to think about. She remembered how she had unbuttoned his shirt so she could run her hands over his chest and stomach; remembered the feel of his nipples going hard under her tongue; remembered running first her finger and then her mouth over his scars and feeling her eyes fill up when she thought about that summer night when she’d come so close to losing him. He hadn’t let her touch him there long: he’d moaned softly for a minute and then pulled her up so his mouth could move down her body again, turning her attention from his pleasure to her own. She remembered how he’d kissed the scars that marred her chest now, and how he’d asked, with so much emotion in his voice, if she could ever forgive him for sending her to that place. She remembered how he had kissed and suckled and stroked every corner of her body; how he’d gasped when he entered her; how he sobbed with relief, tears actually running down his face, when he finally came.

She picked up the hand that was draped over her and stroked its fingers, admiring them. He sighed and shifted a little, without waking. She turned his hand over to plant a kiss in his palm, and stopped short, her eyes widening with shock. 

She stopped breathing. He stirred, and opened his eyes. Outside a robin trilled joyously.

“Your—arm,” she stammered. “You hurt your arm.” The pinkish scars were ugly, long and jagged. She hadn’t seen them last night because he hadn’t taken his shirt off until after he’d turned out the light. 

Josh closed his eyes and drew in a long breath. “Yeah,” he answered. 

“What—what happened?”

He opened his eyes again, and met hers steadily. There was an expression in them that she couldn’t recognize. “It’s what it looks like,” he said quietly.

“I don’t understand,” Donna said, confused. There was something here she knew she should be understanding, but the blood was ringing in her ears and she felt a little dizzy. She hadn’t had much sleep. She probably needed more sleep, and something to eat, and then her head would feel clearer. “How did you ever do that? Were you working on the house? You have to be careful, Josh; you know you don’t know anything about that kind of thing. It can be dangerous. My parents’ next-door neighbor cut his arm trying to put a new window in; he had to have three different surgeries; they said if his wife hadn’t been home he might have bled to death, and he’d been working around the house for years . . . .” Her voice trailed off as she heard herself babbling.

“I wasn’t working on the house, Donna,” Josh said quietly. “I did it last summer, in D.C.”

Last summer. In D.C. After the convention . . . .

“How?”

He sighed, and sat up. “With a knife,” he said, very softly.

“A knife?”

“A kitchen knife.”

“A kitchen knife?” It didn’t make any sense; how could a slip with a kitchen knife have done all that? The dizziness was making her feel sick to her stomach now. “Josh, I’ve told you a million times it’s important to keep your knives sharp so they won’t slip, and use a cutting board, and—”

“It didn’t slip, Donna.”

She stared at him, wide-eyed. He looked back steadily, but his mouth trembled a little. Perhaps it was that that made her finally understand.

“No,” she whispered. “No. You didn’t. You wouldn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice cracking. “I’m sorry.”

“Not like that. Not—that Christmas, you told me you didn’t really, you weren’t really trying . . . .”

“I was lying.”

“Lying?” She could barely get the word out.

“Yeah. More or less.”

“You lied to me?” Her voice sounded high and strangled.

“Not just to you, Donna.” There was a note of desperation in his voice now. “I was lying to everybody. To Leo, to the President, to Keyworth, to the guy he had me see. To myself. Most of all, to myself.”

“I—but—you got better then. You know you did. You went to see that man Dr. Keyworth recommended, and you got better.” You couldn’t have got better if you were lying, she was thinking. It’s not supposed to work like that. “You were fine afterwards. You got better.”

“That’s what I thought, too. For a while.”

“Oh, Josh. If you thought—if you knew—If the PTSD was happening again, why didn’t you see someone? Go back to that psychiatrist, to Dr. Keyworth, to—anyone?” To me, she was thinking, but didn’t want to say. Why didn’t you talk to me?

“It wasn’t like that, Donna. I wasn’t having flashbacks to Rosslyn; what was going on didn’t have anything to do with the shooting. I didn’t think of it as my PTSD coming back again; I didn’t think of it as something I should see someone about. I didn’t think there was anything anyone could do.”

“It—just happened, then? You didn’t really mean to; you didn’t know what was happening; you just—” She was babbling again, desperate, but then she saw the expression on his face and stopped.

“You did know,” she whispered. “You did know you were going to hurt yourself. You did know that.”

“Yeah,” he said softly. “I knew that. It wasn’t something I did because I was in the middle of a flashback or something. Not to the shooting, anyway; they think my PTSD was a part of it, but it wasn’t the same as before. I was angry with myself and exhausted and out of control, but I still knew what I was doing.” 

“But then you stopped,” she said, her voice pleading. “You changed your mind. You called for help—”

He took a deep, shuddering breath. “I didn’t change my mind, Donna. I got lucky. Someone came in—my cleaning lady, she came back for a shopping bag she’d forgotten when she’d left that morning. She has a key. Apparently she trained as a nurse in the Philippines, but she ran out of money before she got her degree. She couldn’t make enough money to give her kids a decent life there, and couldn’t get anything better than a job with a cleaning service here—at least, she couldn’t when she came over. Leo helped her go back to school last fall; she’s finishing up this summer, she shouldn’t have any trouble getting a nursing job then. We’re working on getting her kids over here, too.”

She hardly heard what he was saying. The nausea that had been rising inside her ever since she had seen his arm surged up, overwhelming her. She threw herself out of the bed and ran wildly across the room and into the bathroom, slamming its door behind her. Then she dropped to her knees and hung her head over the toilet, retching and sobbing uncontrollably.

* * *

“Donna? Donna, let me in, please?” Josh’s voice broke on the “please.” She didn’t answer. He pushed the door open a little. She was still bent over the toilet, although the worst of her nausea had passed. He opened the door farther and squatted down beside her, watching helplessly. 

“May—may I touch you?” he finally asked, his voice so broken it cut through Donna’s misery. She nodded. He put a tentative hand on her shoulder. She leaned back a little towards him, shivering, and he wrapped his arms around her, carefully, as though he was expecting her to push him away. When she didn’t, he sank to his knees, rocking her back and forth. “I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to upset you, Donna. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

She leaned back into him and wiped her face with a hank of toilet paper he passed her. Her head felt clearer now, but everything seemed slightly surreal: she and Josh sitting on the bathroom floor, both of them naked, his hands spread over her stomach, his arms wrapped just under her bare breasts, sex the farthest thing from either of their minds. 

“Tell me,” she said, her voice sounding like somebody else’s, plaintive and woeful. “Tell me what happened. Tell me why.”

He squeezed a little tighter. “It had been building up for a while—quite a while—and I’d just been ignoring it, pushing stuff aside, not letting myself think about things I should have been thinking about and dealing with. I felt tense all the time, I couldn’t sleep much, but I didn’t let myself think about why. I just focused on work. There was so much to do, it was easy to get lost in it, and I guess that’s how I tend to cope with things anyway—how I used to cope with them. Only it wasn’t really coping, you know? It was just getting by, hoping the other stuff would go away and I wouldn’t have to think about it, because I didn’t know what to do about it, I didn’t think there was anything I could do about it. But I couldn’t help thinking about it sometimes, and it was ripping me apart. So I just did what I always do and put my head down and threw myself into something I knew I could do something about, or thought I could.”

“The campaign?” Donna asked.

“The campaign. Other things before that—that China trip, whatever I could find. But it all went wrong. I screwed up the China thing, and I screwed up the campaign, and—” 

“Josh,” Donna said, twisting in his arms so she could see his face and he could see hers. “That’s not true, you know that’s not true. You didn’t screw up either of those; you did a great job on them, on both of them. They just didn’t work out the way you wanted.”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, forcing himself to relax. She could see him doing it; it made her want to cry again. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I know. You’re right. But that’s what I was thinking then. And then, when we’d lost and Matt went back to Texas, there wasn’t anything to do anymore, there wasn’t anything to hide behind anymore, and I—I cracked, I guess. I just couldn’t stop beating up on myself, for the campaign, for all the stupid things I’d done that fall before you left, for—” He stopped abruptly. “For everything,” he finished in a whisper. Donna felt a cold finger run down her spine. 

“For what, Josh?” she asked, her voice sounding almost stern. Her heart was racing. “What do you mean, ‘for everything’?”

He squeezed his arms more tightly around her and pulled her down on his shoulder, where she couldn’t see his face. “It’s okay,” he said. “It doesn’t matter now. I’m okay.” 

“Josh,” Donna said again. “You have to tell me. What do you mean, all the stupid things you did before I left? What do you mean by ‘everything’?”

He didn’t answer. It was all the answer she needed. She remembered how he’d reacted when she thanked him for being her teacher, how he’d asked if she could ever forgive him when he’d seen her scars, how he’d told her he loved her, how he’d wept in her arms when he came. 

“It was me, wasn’t it, Josh?” she wailed. “Because you sent me to Gaza and I got hurt. You thought it was your fault. Because you sent me there. Because I was angry with you. Because I went to work for Bob Russell, because I left.”

“It’s okay,” he said, quietly. “I’m okay now, Donna. It’s not going to happen again. It’s okay.”

She buried her face in his chest and wept helplessly. He stroked her hair, saying over and over, “It’s okay. Don’t cry, Donna. It wasn’t your fault. I’m okay now. It’s okay.”

* * *

Donna stood in the shower, soaking in the warmth of the water running over her, letting it clean her body and trying to let it clear her mind. After they’d been sitting together for a while on the bathroom floor, Josh had whispered, “Come on, you need a shower and something to eat,” and had got up and turned on the water and helped her in—it was an old-fashioned claw-footed tub with high sides, and she was still shaky. She’d wondered if he was going to come in too, and had been grateful when he didn’t. She needed a few minutes by herself to pull herself together. She loved that he saw that and gave her the space. It had cost him something—she’d felt him growing hard against her while he’d been holding her, once she’d started to calm down. She couldn’t have handled more sex right now. There’d be time for that later—plenty of time, if she had anything to say about it. Just not now, not right now.

She was still feeling rocked to the core by what she’d just found out. Josh. Just to think of him being hurt and going to the hospital and her not being there, not even knowing about it, took her breath away; but to think of him doing that on purpose, of him actually wanting to do that, wanting what that would do to him—it was unbearable. And then to think of what he must have been going through before that, in the weeks after the convention, in all the weeks and months before that . . . . He’d told her over and over again that it wasn’t her fault, and rationally she knew he was right, but it was hard not to feel as if it was. As if, at the very least, she should have guessed that something was wrong and tried to do something about it, instead of keeping her distance, nurturing her hurt feelings, blaming him for not being what she wanted him to be and doing what she wanted him to do after Germany. 

She couldn’t really believe she’d missed what was happening with him after Gaza. Of course, he’d missed what was happening with her, too—that had obviously taken him completely by surprise, and she knew he wasn’t going to forgive himself for it easily. They’d both been preoccupied with their own emotions after the bombing and their experiences in the hospital in Germany: he’d told her enough as they’d talked just now to let her understand how emotional a time he’d had there, how difficult it had been for him. And the problem was that Josh’s way of dealing with powerful feelings was to ignore them, to push them aside and try to act as if nothing had happened. He’d had a lot of practice at that over the years, so he was pretty good at it, or pretty good at giving the impression that he was good at it, which wasn’t the same thing. And she’d known that about him—that was what really upset her; she’d known how he was, known what kinds of things he got twisted into knots about, and yet she hadn’t seen this coming, hadn’t guessed that it was happening at all. 

Of course, she hadn’t known how deep his feelings for her really went. He loved her—she was still totally amazed by the idea. She’d known that he cared about her; there’d been times when she’d known he was attracted to her; but love—that was what C.J. had seemed so sure she was alone in feeling, and foolish to feel. She’d been too drugged up to remember much about what had happened in the hospital, but she’d been amazed at his having come at all and having stayed so long, and had hoped it might signal a change in their relationship. When it didn’t, she’d been so angry with him for reverting to his old ways and not noticing her, and so angry with herself for having hoped, yet again, for something more, that she’d never really allowed herself to wonder why he might have been acting the way he was. It had been so easy to think, “That’s just Josh, damn it,” and to remember what C.J. had said to her that night of the lockdown and conclude that here was the final proof she needed that she really didn’t matter to him the same way he did to her and she’d never be able to count on him for anything more than what she already had, which wasn’t enough—not nearly enough. It had never crossed her mind that he might be wrestling with emotions he couldn’t handle, or being undermined by the susceptibility to emotional stress that she knew must have started for him when his sister died, but that had become so much more obvious when he’d been shot and developed PTSD.

She’d been worried about him when he wasn’t returning anyone’s calls after the convention, but then she’d listened to Will, who’d been so sure that Josh was just nursing a bruised ego and not wanting to lower his standards to play second fiddle on their campaign and work with them—with her—and she’d allowed herself to be talked into believing that that was all it was. It had been all too easy to believe that Josh wouldn’t want to work with her in her new role, and she’d been hurt all over again, and angry, and ashamed of him, because she’d always believed he was better than that. She’d been bitterly disappointed to think that he would leave the Democrats to fight the election on their own just because the candidate wasn’t the one he’d chosen or because his former assistant had managed to work her way up to Press Spokesperson for the campaign, and had wondered for a while why she’d ever been so infatuated with him at all. Now all she could think was that she shouldn’t have listened to Will, she shouldn’t have listened to Leo, she shouldn’t have worried about the campaign—she should have gone to find him, to see for herself that he really was all right and to help him if he wasn’t. She thought about what might have happened—what, except for the injustices of the distribution of the world’s wealth and a forgotten shopping bag, would have happened—and she felt sick and dizzy all over again. She thought of him lying in the hospital with his injured arm, blood dripping back into him through an IV, on those painkillers that never really did their job as well as you needed them to, and she wanted to cry. She wondered where he had had to go after that, what kind of place it had been, what he had had to do to get better, and thought of him doing it by himself, with no one there who knew him or really cared about him except his mother, if he’d told her, or Leo, who’d been so busy with the campaign he could hardly have spent a lot of time with Josh, and she did cry. She wouldn’t have thought she’d have any tears left, but it turned out she did. The noise of the shower muffled her sobs and the warm water washed her tears away, so she let herself go and cried until she couldn’t cry any more. She didn’t recognize herself; normally she never cried. She hadn’t cried this much since she was about thirteen years old.

The water was starting to run cold before she shut it off and got out. She couldn’t find a hair dryer, and of course she’d forgotten to bring one—she was too used to the amenities of good hotels now, she thought—so she towelled off her hair as best she could, then towelled it again. He’d brought her suitcase up to the bedroom. She freshened her face with some makeup, slipped on her jeans and a cotton sweater, then glanced around the room one more time, wondering again at the thought of Josh choosing such a sweet, old-fashioned place to live. There was a picture propped up on the chest of drawers that she’d noticed before; now she crossed the room and picked it up to look at it more closely. 

It was an oversized postcard, eight inches long by three or so inches tall, showing a panoramic view of blue hills or low mountains. Somewhere in the Blue Ridge, Donna thought, wondering why Josh had chosen that as the only ornament for his bedroom. She didn’t think it was quite the same skyline she was used to from the drive out to Camp David, though perhaps he liked it because it reminded him of that. Without really thinking about what she was doing she turned the card over to see where the picture had been taken, and was surprised to find the back of it covered in Josh’s familiar scrawl.

Age 680,000,000 yrs.  
Av. hgt now 3,000 ft.; tlst pks 6,000 +  
Orig. hgt unkn, prob. like Rockies or more (tlst Rockies pks now 15,500 ft. after 140,000,000 yrs). Flattened once, then lifted up, worn down again.  
1400+ species sheltered by woodland.   
Eastern farmland all alluvial soil, supported native tribes, colonists, still supplies East Coast half its fruit, veg, dairy.   
No U.S. without this.

The last words were underlined. What on earth, she thought, staring at the little set of facts and figures in bewilderment. Then she saw what he’d written below them: Survive it. Endure. Grow. Give. 

She sank down on the windowseat, staring at the words until they were burned into her mind. Then she turned the card over and stared at the picture again, that long line of hills that had once been mountains and had been worn down by the inevitable processes of weather and time, by millions and millions of years of wind and rain and freezing hail and snow, rubbing away at solid rock or slipping into cracks and fissures and breaking them up, breaking them down, but giving in the process the rich soil that had nurtured men and women as they built a nation, that helped sustain millions still. She felt as if she had opened a door and seen Josh’s soul, naked. Her eyes filled with tears again, but they were tears of pride this time, as well as grief.

She didn’t hear him bounding up the stairs. “Donna? I’ve got breakfast rea—” He broke off. She looked up, not bothering to hide the wetness in her eyes. He flushed, then laughed a little, looking embarrassed. 

“You found that?”

“Yes. It’s beautiful.”

He walked over and squatted down beside her.

“That was the view from the place I stayed at for a while, last summer, after—” He gestured vaguely with his arm. Donna swallowed and nodded. 

“How—how long were you there?” she asked, her voice a little choked.

“A couple of months. Leo got me in, and pretty much forced me to stay till I was really back on my feet. I didn’t have much of a choice: he drove me down, so I didn’t have a car to make a getaway in.” He was trying to make a joke of it. Donna gave him a smile to oblige him, but she knew it was a wobbly one.

“They had this barn, where people did art stuff. I stayed the hell away from it for as long as I could, but finally my therapist told me if I didn’t do a couple of sessions down there, she wouldn’t sign me out. It wasn’t as bad as I was expecting; turned out to be kind of interesting, really. They had this big box full of postcards and photographs, and they let you rummage around in it and choose something you liked. And then you were supposed to write stuff about why you chose it, what it meant to you.”

“And that’s what you wrote.”

“Well, part of what I wrote. The digest version. Make a good set of fridge magnets, don’t you think?”

“It’s beautiful.”

“I used to look at it when I got up in the morning, to remind me . . . .” He shrugged, self-consciously, his voice trailing off. “I haven’t thought about it in a while, though. I’d forgotten it was there. I might have known you’d go poking around and find it.” He was smiling, but Donna felt guilty.

“I didn’t have to poke very far, Josh. It was right there on the dresser, and I just turned it over to see where the picture was taken. I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to pry. Do you mind?”

“No,” he whispered. “I don’t mind. Not with you. I don’t mind anything, if it’s you.”

She leaned over to kiss him. It was a very long time before either of them thought about breakfast again.

* * *

“Well, those eggs are shot,” Josh said grinning. They were downstairs in the kitchen, trying to see what they could salvage from the breakfast he’d cooked a couple of hours earlier. “Good thing I went to the store yesterday; there are more.”

“Enough more? I’m starving.”

“Eight more—I had part of a box left that I was using up before. That should satisfy you, shouldn’t it?”

“Maybe. It depends on what we do with them.”

“We? You mean me, what I do with them! This is my kitchen; I do the cooking in it. Your job is to sit back and look decorative.”

“And starve, then.”

“You won’t starve. Wait and see.”

“I can’t wait very long.”

“You won’t have to.”

Donna sat back in one of Josh’s kitchen chairs, and watched him moving around, breaking eggs, grating cheese, rustling in his fridge for some vegetables to chop up for an omlette. He’d put on another pot of coffee, and carved a couple of thick slices off a crusty loaf of bakery bread, popping them into the toaster. A box of greens came out of the fridge along with the vegetables; apparently there was going to be salad. She pried the lid off the box and peered into it in amazement. 

“This is fresh,” she announced.

“You sound surprised.”

“I am surprised.”

He dimpled at her. “I’ve got an easier schedule these days, Donna. I don’t eat just take-out anymore.”

“But—salad. Vegetables. Fresh.”

“Salad. Vegetables. They’re really not as bad as I used to think, but they’re definitely tastier fresh.”

She shook her head. “This is a whole new take on Josh Lyman.”

He was smirking now. “Like it?”

“I could get used to it.”

“You’d better.”

“Had I indeed?”

“Yeah, ‘cause when we’ve eaten something, I’m planning a whole new take on you, and it would really be more fun if you were wanting to take me too.”

“I’ll think about that.”

“I’m thinking about it right now.”

“I can tell.”

“You don’t really need breakfast, do you?”

“I do indeed. In fact, I need breakfast and lunch. I’m starving.”

“Eat this, then. Fast. We can call it brunch, can’t we?”

“Mmmm. This is delicious, Josh.”

“Don’t waste time complimenting the cook. Just eat, damn it, eat. Fast.”

* * *

“I love this house,” Donna said, looking around the room a couple of hours later. She was pulling on her jeans again. Josh was watching her appreciatively.

“You haven’t seen much of it yet,” he said, smiling. “Just the bedroom and the kitchen. Mostly the bedroom.”

“And the living room, last night.”

“Do you want to see the rest of the place?”

“Sure.”

“Come on.”

There were two other rooms off the hall upstairs, both unfurnished, both smaller versions of the big master bedroom, with the same sloping ceiling angles and dormer windows. One room had a ladder standing in it, some tarps and a couple of cans of paint; Josh really must be doing the painting himself. Each room had a little door in the outside wall, under the eaves; Donna opened the one in the back bedroom, and peered in. It seemed to be a closet running back behind the wall towards the front of the house and the other room. 

“They connect,” Josh said, with a smile. “Great for kids, like a secret passageway.”

“Yes, it would be,” Donna said, trying to keep her voice from showing her amazement at the idea of Josh thinking about what was great for kids. 

“And you can climb out of the window into that tree, then down to the garden. That’s the great thing about apple trees; they’re wonderful for climbing.”

She was staring at him now, her mouth open. He looked over at her, and smiled, a little hesitantly. “This was my room,” he said softly. “Joanie had the other one.”

“This was your house?” Donna was stunned. She’d seen the house he’d spent his teenage years in, a couple of times, before his mother had sold it and moved to Florida. “Before—before—”

“Before Joanie died,” Josh said, simply. “Yeah. I came back to take a look after I left the clinic, and there was a For Sale sign in the yard, and—I bought the place. It was only the kitchen that was damaged in the fire; it had all been redone. It probably sounds kind of crazy, my wanting to live here again, but I talked about it with my therapist before I made the offer, and she thought it could be a good idea for a while. She’d really made me look at stuff I’d been avoiding forever, even with the other people—the other therapists—I’ve seen. I’m not trying to live in the past or anything, just—I don’t know, get it back? There was so much I’d forgotten, so many good things—like that tree, I’d forgotten about that tree. I used to climb in there and pretend all sorts of things. And those closets. Before Joanie got too big we used to take the stuff out and crawl back and forth after we were supposed to be in bed, and play in there, pirates and robbers and stuff like that. You’d think she would always have been the leader, but a lot of the time she let me be. There’s a lot of stuff like that that I hadn’t remembered—hadn’t let myself remember, I guess. It’s good to remember it now. Does that make sense?” He looked at her, a touch of anxiety in his face. 

Donna put her hand in his. “Show me,” she said, softly. “Show me everything.”

He squeezed her hand, his eyes full of relief and gratitude. “Come on downstairs,” he said. “And then outside. We used to play out there a lot; it was a really cool yard . . . .”

Donna followed, smiling and nodding, feeling indescribably grateful that Josh had made peace with his past at last.

* * *

“Want to go out for dinner?” Josh asked, a while later. “There are some good places around here.”

“Sure,” Donna said. “I’d love to. What did you have in mind?”

“What do you feel like? Italian? French? Chinese? Japanese? Indian? Thai? Nouvelle for meat-eaters? Nouvelle vegetarian? Good old American steak or seafood?”

“My, you are well-equipped up here, aren’t you?”

“Don’t tell me you’re surprised. Martha Stewart has a house here, you know.”

“I’d forgotten.” Donna’s expression changed a little. Josh didn’t notice.

“So, what would you like? This is a special occasion—we can go five stars if you want. Assuming we can get in at one of those places, of course. I don’t have quite the pull I used to, though we could always use your name instead.” He was grinning. Donna wasn’t.

“Do any of them do take-out?” she asked. 

“Of course.”

“Let’s do that, then. We could just be comfortable here. If—you don’t mind?”

“Does being comfortable mean getting to touch you whenever I want to? Wherever I want to?”

Donna laughed then. “That depends.”

“On what?”

“On how hungry I am and how much I’ve had time to eat before you start wanting to touch me.”

“I want to touch you right now.”

“Let’s pick a restaurant and call the order in first, shall we?”

“Don-na.” The tone was a whine, but he couldn’t resist dimpling at her, which spoiled the effect.

“And we’ll have to pick it up.”

“Don-NA.” The whine was bigger, but so were the dimples. 

“Unless some place delivers.”

“Just the pizza parlors. Say, wouldn’t you like some pizza? There’s a really great place I order from sometimes.”

“Jo-osh.” She pulled off a pout to match his whine.

“Yeah?”

“Going to pick up something better would kill you?”

“If it means having to wait to touch you, yes. Definitely. No question about it.”

“You’re impossible.”

“Yes. I admit it. No contest. It’s really good pizza, though; you’ll like it. And I’ve got some good beer.”

Donna pretended to consider this, but actually she thought beer and pizza in the privacy of Josh’s house sounded like a pretty good thing. 

“Vegetarian?” 

“Pepperoni.”

“We need vegetables.”

“There were veggies in the omlette I made at lunch, and I served salad with it.”

“Pepperoni’s bad for you. Vegetarian, with goat cheese and pesto, or you go out to pick up Thai. It’ll be an hour before the Thai would be ready, at least. No touching till it comes.”

“You’re a cruel woman.”

“I am.”

“And a hard negotiator.”

“I learned from the best.”

“Vegetarian it is. I’ll call right now. Do I get to touch till it comes?”

“Only with clothes on.”

“We’ll see how long you go on saying that.”

* * *

The day had been sunny but cool, and by the time the pizza came there was enough of a chill in the air to justify lighting a fire in the fireplace, which Josh managed without any undue difficulty. “It helps when the flue isn’t sealed shut,” he pointed out when Donna feigned surprise at an ability she said she’d never suspected. It really did surprise her that he suggested it when he saw her shivering; she’d always thought he was just putting on a show of nonchalance for Sam the time they’d almost set fire to the White House. She wondered if he was putting on the same show for her now, or if it really wasn’t a problem for him. The question must have been obvious in her face, because he seemed to know what she was thinking. “It’s okay,” he said, glancing at her before putting his arm around her shoulders as he settled back into the couch beside her. “We always had fires on cold nights at home, here and in the other house. I’m probably kind of neurotic about putting them out afterwards, but otherwise they don’t bother me. I like having them; I made quite a few for myself last winter. It’s a New England thing.”

“And a Wisconsin one,” Donna said, cozying herself into his arm. The pizza was delicious, the beer good, and Josh’s company everything she could have asked for. When they’d finished eating he took the mess out to the kitchen and then made long, slow love to her in front of the fire. It would have been an entirely perfect evening, if only she’d been able to silence the little voice that had started talking to her earlier, when he’d reminded her that Westport was very far from being the out-of-the-way country place she’d been half-thinking of it as, or when he’d joked that her name could get them a seat in the best restaurants, even on a busy Saturday night. Anonymity would be no more possible here than it would in D.C. And that, that inconvenient voice kept whispering to her, was going to be a problem.

* * *

“So,” Donna said. 

“So,” Josh answered. They were sitting at the kitchen table, having one last cup of coffee together. Donna’s bag was packed and standing in the hall beside the front door.

“I should be getting back.”

“You should,” Josh said, smiling a little. “You are the White House Press Secretary, after all.”

“I am.”

“I imagine you have a few things to do before tomorrow’s briefing.”

“I do.”

There was a pause. Josh cleared his throat. “Will you—that is, do you think—you might—want—to come back sometime?”

Donna flushed a little. “Do you want me to?” She was being a coward, she thought, stalling like that, but she couldn’t help it.

He reached out a hand and wrapped it around hers. “Of course I do.”

“Then—yes, I’d like to. Of course I would. It’s just—”

“You don’t know when.” He sounded accepting, resigned.

“I often have weekends free, unless something big comes up. I’m sure I can come again. But—”

“But what, Donna?” 

She flushed more deeply than before. “I—” She couldn’t go on, couldn’t say the thing that had been whispering to her last night and all but screaming at her all morning, ever since she’d started thinking seriously about the implications of what she was doing with Josh.

Josh bit his lip, and dropped his eyes. “It’s the job, isn’t it?” he asked. His voice sounded as if it had gravel in it.

“I’m the White House Press Secretary, Josh.”

“I’m not a member of the White House Press Corps. I’m not even a journalist. I’m helping run a largely apolitical foundation.”

“You do more than that, Josh. You know it.”

“I’ve written a few op-ed pieces, been a talking head on ‘Washington Week’ a few times. So what?”

“You know what they’ll say.”

“That two single adults with somewhat different political views are having a relationship? So what? We’re both Democrats, for God’s sake; it shouldn’t make any difference at all.”

“It will, though. You know that, Josh.”

“Yeah,” he said, taking his hand away from hers and pushing his chair back from the table a little. “Yeah, I suppose to a few people it will.”

“I can’t make bad press for the White House, Josh. I’m not supposed to be the story. You know that better than anyone.”

“You want to protect this White House?”

“Of course I do, Josh. It’s my job! My job to get this White House the best press possible, not a run of stories about how the Press Secretary is sleeping with one of her boss’s biggest critics. It wouldn’t go over well at all, Josh, if people found out. Will expects loyalty from his staff. The President expects loyalty from his staff.”

“Yeah,” Josh said, a touch of bitterness in his voice. “Yeah, I see.” The word “loyalty” stung him to the core, and yet of course he did see.

“Josh, I’m not saying I don’t want this thing between us to go on. That’s not what I’m saying at all.”

“What are you saying then, Donna?”

“I’m just saying I can’t do it right now. This isn’t a good time for us to do this.”

“And when will a good time be? Four years from now, when you’re out of office? Or eight, if the next election goes your way?” 

“No, Josh, I’m not saying that. I’m just—can’t you see how bad it would be, if the press found out I was involved with you right now? You were fierce about us on that show Friday night. You took us apart in that last piece you wrote for the Post. You’ve criticized everything we’ve done.”

“Donna, your administration hasn’t done anything. That’s what I’ve been criticizing.”

“You’re not being fair, Josh. I know we haven’t done everything the way you’d have done it, everything you’d like to see done. But you weren’t there to do it. Maybe if you’d—” She broke off suddenly.

“No,” he said, “I wasn’t.” With his right hand he started fingering the cuff of his left sleeve. Donna took in the gesture and swallowed, hard.

“Josh,” she said, in a different tone. “I’m sorry. I know you couldn’t be. I know it’s my fault you couldn’t be—”

“It wasn’t your fault,” he interrupted her. “It wasn’t your fault, Donna. Don’t ever think that. And Will made me an offer right after the convention; I turned him down.”

“I know.” 

“I didn’t turn him down because I was cracking up, Donna. I turned him down for the same reasons I turned him down the fall before, when he asked me to come in and run Russell’s campaign. I turned him down because I didn’t think Russell should be President. I couldn’t make myself go and work for someone I didn’t think could do the job. And how you can talk about loyalty to that bumbling, semi-literate, conceited, cardboard excuse for a man—”

Donna felt the flush creep over her face again. “Josh,” she said. She didn’t have to say anything more. He looked at her, and sighed.

“I’m sorry, Donna,” he said, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his hands over his face, the way he did when he was tired. “I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t want to argue with you. I’m sorry.”

“He is the President, Josh.”

“I know.”

“And this is my job, Josh. It’s my chance. You had your chance, and you took it. You told me the other night you wanted me all those years we worked together, and yet you never said anything, never did anything about it, and you know it was because of your job. You didn’t think you could do it as well if I wasn’t there to help you, or if the press got hold of it and made a big thing out of it, out of us. And they would have. And they still would.”

“It wasn’t as simple as that, Donna.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“No, it wasn’t! I didn’t know—I never knew what you wanted, what you thought of me. Most of the time I didn’t think you ever thought of me that way.”

“You must have had some idea, Josh.”

“I didn’t.”

“I think I was pretty obvious sometimes.”

“Not obvious enough. Yes, there were some times, after I was shot, that I thought, maybe, if I was lucky as hell—but then you changed. I thought you’d changed your mind. I thought you’d just been feeling sorry for me. I really didn’t think you thought of me that way.”

“Well, I didn’t think you thought of me like that, either.”

“I couldn’t do anything, Donna. I was your boss—how bad would that have been, to come on to you when you had to work with me every day? What could you have done, if you hadn’t wanted me to? Told me to bug off, and then have to go on working with me? File a complaint? Quit? What kind of jerk would I have to have been, to put you in that position? And—maybe I was a coward, but I couldn’t put myself in that position, either. There was always someone else you were talking about, someone else you were with. Until you showed up at my door at one o’clock in the morning the other night, I really didn’t think you’d want me if I told you what I felt. Though I honestly thought you knew, after I flew to Germany, after you’d been hurt. And you never seemed less interested than you did after that.”

Donna bit her lip, trying to calm the rush of emotions that was swirling around her. This was the most important conversation she’d ever had with Josh. She didn’t want to mess it up, and she had a terrible feeling she was doing just that.

“Josh,” she said, feeling as if she was pleading with him to understand. “I do want this to happen. I do want to be with you. I’m just asking you to give me a little time. Not four years, not eight years, just—a little time.”

He looked at her. He was breathing hard, as if he’d just been running. “You do? Want—to be—with me?”

“Oh Josh,” she said, her voice breaking. “Of course I do. I just need to figure out how to do this, what the best way is. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it wouldn’t be such a big deal. Maybe I just need to go back, talk to someone—talk to Will. He’s known both of us for a long time; maybe he’d understand. But I need to find the right time to do that. I just don’t want to make a mess of things with this job. It’s the most important job I’ve ever had, the most important job I probably ever will have. If I can’t make it work so I can be with you, I’ll quit. But I want to have given myself a decent chance to make things work first, and this isn’t the right time for me to bring this up with Will. I’ve got that wording to talk to him about, in that bill you looked at, and he’ll be angry about the things you said the other night, and—it’s just not a good time. And if I do quit, I want to do it the right way. I don’t want to make a mess for the President and then leave in the middle of it because I have to, because I’ve made the mess. You understand that, don’t you? You’d do the same thing if it was you, you know you would.”

Josh looked down, and sighed. “Yeah,” he said. “I understand. You’re right—I would do the same thing. I just—” He broke off, and sat silently, playing with the cuff of his left sleeve.

“Just what, Josh?”

“I just—wouldn’t be doing it for this President. But yes, he’s still the President, and yes, I understand what you’re saying, Donna.”

“Thank you.”

He smiled at her, painfully. 

“So—basically, I’ll hear from you when I hear from you?”

“I’ll be in touch, Josh.”

“Yeah.”

“Soon.”

“Okay.”

“Really.”

“Okay, Donna. It’s okay.”

“Josh?”

“Yes, Donna?”

“I do love you, you know.”

“I love you too, Donna. I really do.”

He stopped playing with his sleeve and put his hand over hers on the table again. They sat that way, silently, for a long time. Finally Donna said, “Well, I’d better get going.” “Yeah,” Josh said. “It’s a long drive.” He carried her bag to the car, gave her a quick kiss goodbye, and stood at the curb watching as she drove away. It was starting to rain again, but he stood there for a long time after her car had disappeared, looking after it. Then he turned and walked back into the house, turned on his computer, and tried to think about his work.

Donna cried all the way down the New Jersey Turnpike and through most of Delaware and Maryland. It was only when she turned off the Beltway at her exit that the thought of what she was going to even began to balance out the thought of what she had left behind.

“It’s just for a little while,” she told herself. “Just for a little while, until I get things sorted out.”

She wanted desperately to call him when she got back, but she didn’t think she’d ever be able to hang up the phone, so she sent him an email instead.

* * *  
* * *


	4. Chapter 4: Patriot Acts

Part 4—Patriot Acts

For a century, the Appalachians were a barrier to the westward expansion of the British colonies; the continuity of the system, the bewildering multiplicity of its succeeding ridges, the tortuous courses and roughness of its transverse passes, a heavy forest, and dense undergrowth all conspired to hold the settlers on the seaward-sloping plateaus and coastal plains . . . .

[To] the unsuspected strength of the colonists . . . the geographic isolation enforced by the Appalachian mountains [was] a prime contributor. The confinement of the colonies between an ocean and a mountain wall led to the fullest occupation of the coastal border of the continent . . . conducing to a community of purpose, a political and commercial solidarity, which would not otherwise have been developed. . . . Unsupported by shipping, the American armies fought toward the sea with the mountains at their back protecting them . . . .

Wikipedia, “Appalachian Mountains: Influence on History”

 

(June 16, 2007)

Josh didn’t have to be anywhere that Monday. One of the good things about his job at the Foundation was the flexibility in his schedule; unless he had people he had to meet with, he could do a lot of his work from home. It surprised him how much he enjoyed that: he’d always been a people person, thriving off the energy of the minds around him and the frenetic pace in his jobs on the Hill and at the White House. He still loved the buzz he got whenever he went into New York, but somewhere along the line he’d stopped wanting that on a daily basis. It was one of the good things to come out of the disaster of last summer, he thought; he’d finally had to learn to slow down and enjoy some of quieter pleasures life brought him along its way. He’d never realized before how much he’d been missing. It had taken two months in the foothills of the Blue Ridge and those interminable hours talking to Sue Thornton to get him to see that, and why he’d been missing it. His addiction to work hadn’t been just for the work’s sake; it had always been the easy way out for him, easier by far than confronting the tangled mess of guilt and denial that had gotten twisted around so many other aspects of his life, especially anything to do with family or home.

Buying the house he’d grown up in before the tragedy that had caused all that tangled mess had been as much a gamble as anything, but it had yielded all he’d hoped for and then some. He’d never expected to feel the kind of peace and contentment he’d found here. As he’d told Donna, it wasn’t a question of living in the past but of rediscovering it, getting it back—of letting himself feel the sadness of what had happened in that place, but not allowing that sadness to keep him from remembering all the good things that had happened there too. Living there had allowed him to feel for the first time he could remember that he really, genuinely wanted the things that house represented to him—family, children, a life with more to it than just work, however important that work might be in helping the world, and however important it might still be to him. 

Now he knew he wanted those things and could even feel that perhaps he had a right to them. That was something else that had taken him by surprise—discovering how deeply he’d allowed himself to feel unentitled to the ordinary pleasures and supports of life. He’d had no idea: in fact, when Sue Thornton first suggested it, he’d laughed at her. Now he knew she’d been right. He wondered, on this Monday morning, if he should have tried to explain all that to Donna that last afternoon, when they’d been talking about why he hadn’t tried to make something happen with her during all those years they’d worked together, but he’d exposed himself so much that weekend and was so unsure of what the consequences were going to be that he couldn’t have taken it then. Everything he’d said to her had been true, it just hadn’t been all of the truth as he understood himself now. But she’d said she needed to leave, needed to take her time before continuing this thing they’d begun that weekend, and if that was what she needed then, however much it hurt, he knew it was what he needed too. The last thing he wanted was to have to wonder for the rest of his life if she’d given up her job and stayed with him because he’d somehow guilted her into it by talking about how his brush with suicide had made him realize that the thing he wanted and needed more than anything else in the world was this house or someplace like it, and Donna in it beside him, cooking together in the kitchen, talking together in front of the fire, making love together in the big bed upstairs, their children climbing in the apple trees and running through the garden outside. He knew too much about guilt to want to inflict it on anyone he cared about, or to have to live with the consequences of it anymore himself.

Not that he was finding it easy to live with the consequences of letting her go. The weeks after she left were almost as hard to get through as those first weeks after he’d moved into the house had been. Then it had been the old memories that had haunted him: he’d eaten every meal out of the house for the first month just so he wouldn’t have to step into the kitchen, even though he knew from the agent’s description that it had been completely remodelled and rebuilt. He’d been a little less than perfectly honest with Donna about how building fires in the fireplace had affected him: he hadn’t had much trouble with it as a teenager in the house they’d moved to, or—apart from his failure to read warning signs about flues that were welded shut—as an adult in the White House, either, but in this house his hands had shaken so badly he’d gone through half a box of matches the first time he’d forced himself to light one on an icy winter night, and the smell of smoke and crackle of flames had kept him awake night after night, long after he’d doused the fire in the fireplace and drawn the mesh curtains tight across the opening, and after he’d patrolled the rooms, checking every battery in every smoke detector he’d put up in every room. He’d made peace with those ghosts eventually, but it had taken a lot of sleepless nights and a few expensive phone calls to Sue Thornton to quiet them down. He wasn’t finding it much easier to deal with the new ghosts that seemed to have moved into the house to haunt him: the memory of Donna standing on his doorstep in the rain; the look on her face just before he kissed her the first time; her warm, silken body moving under him in his bed. The sound of her voice telling him she loved him. The sound of that same voice talking about her loyalty to Bob Russell, telling him she had to leave. “It’s only for a while,” he told himself twenty or more times a day. “She said she wanted to be with you; she said she’d quit if she had to. This is only for a while.” But the trouble with taking his defenses down and letting himself admit how much he needed her was that he didn’t have anything much left to put up in their place. He read her emails over obsessively, and avoided using his cell phone in case he missed one of her calls. The contact always left him raw and aching for hours afterwards, but he craved it the way he imagined an addict craved his drug. It was hard to focus on his work, harder still to keep up the chores around the house he’d found so much simple satisfaction in just a few weeks ago, but he didn’t want to go into New York instead; he couldn’t tear himself away from the sense of her that clung to every room in his house. He turned down all the offers that came in to comment on the White House in newspapers or on t.v., and all the dinner invitations, too. He found himself studying the postcard of the mountains in the mornings and before he went to bed, trying to remember why he’d written those things and what they’d meant to him again. 

But on this particular morning, he woke up feeling better than he had any time in the weeks since she’d left. She’d called him the night before and said she was going to talk to Will in the morning—today. She thought Will had had time to get over his pique with Josh for the things Josh had said in that last t.v. appearance, and was pleased at the ease with which their education bill had passed the House and the reception it seemed likely to get next month in the Senate. He even seemed pleased with her for catching that ambiguous language that might have held things up, although Deputy Chief of Staff Porter seemed rather less pleased, and had been making more than his usual share of sneering remarks about assistants. Josh burned with indignation when she told him that, but his desire to go and smash Harold Porter into a wall was offset by relief that Donna was going to bring the issue of her relationship with Josh to Will at last. He hoped it went well; however much he hated her working for a President he despised, he understood why it mattered to her, and he wanted her to have any opportunity she wanted and any satisfaction it could bring. She’d ended the conversation by telling him again that she loved him and wanted to be with him. Josh didn’t feel any need to look at mountains that morning; he was humming in the shower and whistling to himself as he puttered about the kitchen, getting his coffee going while listening to the morning news on the little t.v. on the counter, and yelling at the announcer when he mentioned anything particularly inane that Tom Cruise or Jennifer Lopez had done. 

The shriek of the kettle and the whirr of his coffee grinder drowned the anchor’s voice out for a minute. Josh breathed deeply, taking in the rich aroma of the coffee mingling with the eggs and bacon he had going in the frying pan—his family had never been observant, and the smell of coffee and bacon was one of the good memories that was deeply rooted in this house for him—and relishing the contentment he was feeling. The sun was shining outside. It was going to be a beautiful day.

The bacon was spluttering in the frying pan; Josh turned off the heat under it and moved the pan to another burner, then dumped the coffee grounds into the press and took the screaming kettle off the stove. It gurgled and spluttered until he poured the boiling water over the rough grounds, the smell of coffee steaming up into his face. In the sudden quiet that followed, the voice from the television rang out with unexpected force.

“ . . . a series of explosions that rocked the nation’s capitol just minutes ago while commuters made their way to work. Screams and smoke are reported to be issuing from two busy subway stations, Union Station and Metro Center, in the heart of downtown Washington, D.C., while passengers are still stumbling out, some of them bleeding. And—wait—yes, this is a confirmed report I’ve just been handed, that there’s been another explosion in the vicinity of the White House. We have no further details at this time. We’ll keep you posted as we get more information on that. And now, we’ve got our correspondent on the ground at Union Station, two blocks from the United States Capitol . . . .”

The boiling water filled the press and spilled over, flooding the counter with black, scalding liquid that ran over the edge and down the front of the cabinets, splattering Josh’s bare feet with drops that burned and stung. He hardly noticed. The kettle dropped to the floor with a crash as he ran for his phone. His hands were shaking so much he could barely hit the single digit on his speed-dial for Donna’s cell.

He couldn’t even get her voice-mail; her box was already full. Of course—every journalist in the White House Press Corps would be calling her, asking when she’d be briefing, begging for a comment. But where was she, and was she all right? He tried the White House number, but the switchboard was jammed. He turned on the larger t.v. in the living room and sat on the couch in front of it, mechanically pushing Donna’s two numbers over and over, hoping to get through, watching transfixed by the pictures of a city and a nation under siege. The reports were varied and confusing: a plane had crashed into the White House and blown up. It hadn’t hit the White House, but had been shot down by snipers on the roof and exploded in the gardens near the Ellipse. There hadn’t been a plane, but a bomb in a car that had somehow gotten through the security at the gates and exploded right beside the building. Not one car, but two cars and two explosions. Not inside the gates but outside them. A plane and a car. Not a plane or a car bomb at all, but one of the crazies in Lafayette Square, who’d gotten tired of waving his sign calling for the end of the world and decided to do something more dramatic to bring it on. Meanwhile the number of casualties at the two Metro stations was growing, and there were reports of unspecified incidents at the Capitol and the State Department, while a fiery pileup on the Beltway might have been caused by an explosion in the densely-packed morning rush-hour traffic. And then, unexpectedly, reports of new attacks in different cities around the country: bombs had gone off, almost simultaneously, in the subways in New York and Chicago. A truck loaded with explosives drove through the doors at a major shopping mall in St. Louis. And another, a little while later, at Disneyworld. There was no mistaking the accuracy of some of the reports: the pictures of people staggering from the subways and out of the mall were terrifying.

Finally, at a little after 12:00 noon, Donna’s picture flashed on the screen. She looked pale and Josh could tell she was upset, but she spoke firmly. At a few minutes before 8:00 that morning there had been what appeared to be a suicide bombing on Pennsylvania Avenue, close to the White House gates. A number of people had been injured, but the exact number of casualties was not known at this time. Moments later, a small twin-engine aircraft had crashed near the back of the White House and exploded. There was some damage to the building, but she was unable to report on the extent of it or on the number of casualties at this time. The President and his family had not been injured. There had also been bombings at two Metro stations in the downtown area around the same time, and later in the morning at subway stations in Chicago and New York, and a shopping mall in Saint Louis. An attempted attack at Disneyworld had been thwarted by alert security personnel, and the driver of the truck arrested. The President was deeply grieved and angered by these attacks on United States citizens and the United States government. No, she could not comment on the extent of the damage to the White House, the whereabouts of the President, or when he would be addressing the nation. No, she could not comment on how the bombing had taken place in the section of Pennsylvania Avenue that was supposed to be secure, or how the airplane had evaded the no-fly zone over downtown Washington and the Secret Service precautions around the building. The White House did not comment on matters of security. She would not take any further questions at this time.

Josh pushed himself out of his couch, went upstairs, and packed a bag. Then he got in his car and started driving. Washington wasn’t the sanest place to go at the moment, but it never occurred to him that he should be doing anything else. 

* * *

Donna didn’t get home till midnight that night. If it had been the Bartlet White House, she thought dully, she wouldn’t have been able to go home at all. She should be grateful—she was exhausted—but it didn’t feel right. Something terrible had happened that day, and surely the White House staff should be working round the clock to find out why and what might be going to happen next, and doing something to try to stop it. The Secret Service and the N.S.A. and even the Joint Chiefs probably were, but she’d been told to go home. Not by Will or Porter, who had disappeared along with the President and a number of other key staff, but by the Deputy Head of Communications, a young man named Stanfield Ricks, who was technically her equal on the staffing tree but seemed to have suddenly been invested with authority over the remaining White House staff. After the building had been attacked they’d all been evacuated to the Pentagon, where she’d given her morning briefing to the members of the press corps who’d been able to assemble there. The President and the key senior staff had been whisked off to an undisclosed location; Stanfield told her, rather breathlessly, that to avoid becoming a target they were flying around the country in Air Force One. She’d finally gotten to speak to Will, who’d refused to confirm where the President was or to tell her when the President was planning to address the country. She’d argued vehemently that he should do it right away, but couldn’t get any kind of commitment out of Will. She had the distinct impression that the White House Chief of Staff was confused and out of his depth. Which was frightening, because if Will wasn’t sure what to do, she was absolutely certain President Russell didn’t, either.

Not that she didn’t feel confused and inadequate herself—she did, desperately—but she was sure of one thing, that they needed to give the country and the world the impression that they were prepared for this and knew what they were doing. “I can’t keep going back to the press and telling them I don’t know anything more,” she protested to Will. “And the country doesn’t want to see me—they want to see the President.” “Well, they can’t see him, not now,” Will had answered. She could hear the tension in his voice even over the less-than-perfect air-to-ground connection. “He’s all right, isn’t he?” she’d asked, the alarm rising in her voice. “He wasn’t hurt,” Will said, which relieved her at the time, but struck her later as being a rather odd way to phrase that answer. She wondered what the President’s condition was, and why Will wouldn’t listen to her attempts to convince him that the President had to go on the air. Russell might not have been injured physically, but it occurred to her now that a man of his not-very-distinguished abilities might quite possibly be rendered incapable of performing the requisite part of the firm and able leader in a situation like this, perhaps even incapable of doing anything at all.

It was 10:30 when Stanfield told her he’d just been talking to Porter and been told that they’d hear nothing more that night and should go home. Her car was still at the White House, and getting a taxi at the Pentagon at that hour would have been a difficult tactical operation even on an ordinary day. Finally one of the young aides offered to drive her. He was going back, he said when he dropped her off, which made her feel even more as if the world had tipped upside-down when a twenty-something Navy lieutenant needed to be on duty in a time of national crisis, but the White House Press Secretary didn’t.

She was so tired she almost gave him the wrong address. She still wasn’t used to living where she did: she’d moved just before the Inauguration into an elegant townhouse in Georgetown, which she was renting—she couldn’t afford to buy yet—from a member of the diplomatic corps who was overseas. It hadn’t come furnished, but she’d sent most of her old stuff to Goodwill and used her new salary and her new credit limit to buy a few good things. The effect was sparse but stylish, suiting the architecture, with its high ceilings and deep moldings and gleaming floors, and suiting her new position as well. That the house was just a couple of blocks from Josh’s old one had, until recently, been a point she’d studiously ignored. She thought of it now, though, as she climbed wearily out of the car and started up the stairs to her door. If only he was still living there, she thought, she’d throw caution to the winds and go to him. She’d missed him desperately for the past few weeks, but never more than she did right now.

She hardly noticed the sound of a car door opening and shutting, or the footsteps coming up the sidewalk behind her. He said her name, softly, just as she was putting her key in the lock, and she nearly jumped out of her skin.

“Josh! What on earth? What are you doing here? How did you get here?”

“Shhh,” he said. “I came to see you, of course. I’ve been waiting in my car. But if you don’t want the neighbors to know, we should go in.”

Donna felt the most ridiculous surge of joy as she opened her door and let Josh in. It had been the most frightening, bewildering, terrifying, utterly awful day, but suddenly she felt as if everything was going to be all right. She knew that was absurd—there was nothing Josh could do to change what had happened, and probably not much he would be able to do about anything that was still going to happen, either—but seeing him, hearing his voice, feeling his arm slip around her as they stepped into the house made her feel as if her corner of the world at least was still whole and well. It made her feel safe. There had, after all, been one day in her life that had been worse than this one, and she was indescribably grateful that she hadn’t had to end this day sitting in a hospital waiting to hear whether the man beside her would live or die.

She flipped on the light, and turned to look at him. The safe feeling slipped a little, and her heart lurched.

“You look awful,” she blurted out.

“Thanks, Donna. Just what I was hoping to hear after driving all day to see you,” he answered, smiling a little.

“Josh, what have you been doing with yourself? You look worn out.”

“It’s a long drive. And I might have been a little bit, you know, concerned about what was happening.”

“You look more tired than that; you look like you haven’t slept in days. And you’ve lost weight.”

Josh shrugged. “I’m fine, Donna. It’s how you are I’m worried about.”

“I’m okay.”

“Really?”

“It’s been quite a day, but yes, really, I’m okay. Or I will be. But all those people . . . . Oh God, Josh, I’m so glad to see you,” and she threw her arms around him. Their lips met, and neither of them breathed again for quite some time.

“That’s good,” he murmured, when they came up for air. “I thought maybe you’d changed your mind or something.”

“Don’t joke about that, Josh. You know I haven’t changed my mind.”

“Even though I look awful?” He dimpled at her, but she realized suddenly that he hadn’t been joking.

“Josh, you weren’t really worried, were you? That I’d changed my mind, I mean?”

He shrugged again and smiled, a little ruefully, but she could see the answer in his eyes. 

“Oh Josh,” she said, “I’m sorry. I thought you understood.”

“I understand that you’re a beautiful woman on her own in a city full of gomers,” he said, trying to make light of it, “being stared at by the entire White House press corps every day.”

“It’s only Helen Thomas you’ve got to watch out for,” Donna said, picking up his tone, even though she still felt stricken. “I’ve got a thing for her, you know.”

“Everybody’s got a thing for Helen Thomas,” Josh said. “The question is, does she have a thing for you?”

“You’re supposed to pretend that everybody has a thing for me.”

“Every straight man has a thing for you, and probably every gay woman, but I’ve always had the impression that Helen prefers men.”

“So do I,” Donna said, leading him towards her couch. “One man,” she added, stopping his comeback before he had a chance to make it and stopping anything else he was going to say by kissing him again. After that it was a very long time before either of them was able to say anything coherent at all.

* * *

Donna woke up first, a few minutes before her alarm, the way she always did. She turned it off so it wouldn’t wake Josh and propped herself up on her elbow, looking down at the man beside her, wondering what she should do. She hadn’t had a chance to talk to Will yet, and obviously wasn’t going to get an opportunity any time soon now. She still wasn’t sure how this would play with him anyway; she’d been exaggerating her confidence to Josh on the phone the other night. She would have stalled for more time again if she hadn’t been feeling so fed up with the situation herself, and if Josh hadn’t sounded so unexpectedly forlorn when he’d asked her when she thought she might bring it up with Will. She’d planned a couple of times to take a chance and slip away for the weekend, but both times something had come up at work. She wondered how big a chance they were taking, being together now. On the one hand, everyone from the reporters to the White House Chief of Staff had much more important things to think about after yesterday than the White House Press Secretary’s romantic liasons. On the other hand, this would be the worst possible time for the administration’s critics to get hold of something they could use to make a member of the White House Senior Staff—the most visible representative of the administration, after the President himself—look bad. But how bad would it really make her look? Donna wasn’t sure. She and Josh were both unmarried; it wasn’t a question of adultery. They’d known each other a long time, which would make it easier to argue that the relationship was serious—but which opened them up to claims that they’d been together secretly for a long time too, claims that would be hard to refute, even though anyone who knew them would know they weren’t true. Josh had been stinging in his criticism of the President, both during the Santos campaign and since Russell had taken office, but he’d kept a low profile for the last six weeks, saying and doing nothing that might make this harder for her. Was it enough? She just didn’t know. The real problem wasn’t the press or the far right, but Will, Harold Porter—who had known the President for a long time, and seemed to have a lot of influence with him—and Russell himself. She knew Will hadn’t liked it when Josh had refused to help with the campaign; she doubted Josh had been tactful in whatever he’d said. Both Will and Porter had been furious with Josh for the things he’d been saying about their performance since they’d taken office, and she imagined that the President had been too. She wanted to think that Will was mature enough to see past his differences with Josh and not hold them against him, or her. She wanted to think that about Porter and the President, too. She wasn’t at all certain of any of them, but she’d have placed more money on Will to be reasonable about things than she would on either of the other men. And that was a deeply disturbing thought, since one of those men was President of the United States. 

She felt no personal loyalty to Bob Russell himself, only to the office he held and to the job she’d been given as his chief publicist and representative to the press and the world. She’d gone to work for his campaign mainly because Will had hired her, and she’d gone to Will because she’d heard that he was hiring and she’d wanted—needed—another job, something away from Josh so she could begin to get over him and get on with her life, something more challenging where she could find out what she could really do. Will had given her that chance, and then some. She hadn’t stopped to think very carefully about the man she was really working for, and whether or not it was a good idea to make him the President of the United States. She’d never had any illusions that Bob Russell was another Jed Bartlet, but as Vice-President it had seemed almost a foregone conclusion that he would be the Democratic choice to run, and she’d been excited by the prospect of being on his team. She’d been even more excited by the position she’d ended up in on that team. She wondered now if that was really all she’d thought about, because running Bob Russell as the Democratic candidate hadn’t prepared her at all for the experience of watching Bob Russell govern, or trying to help him do it.

He wasn’t actually a stupid man. If anything he exaggerated his intellectual limitations in public, probably because he’d found in his political career that the average voter responded better to dumb jokes about Vice-Presidential seals than to bookish witticisms with a Latinate tang. Not that he would have been capable of the bookish witticisms; he read very little, and took a kind of perverse pride in getting other people to do his reading for him. Donna had never seen him do more than glance at a newspaper; he expected his staff to keep him briefed on whatever they thought he needed to know. He was singularly lacking in curiosity, tended to be dismissive of academics and intellectuals, and was fond of saying that he trusted common sense more than uncommon learning. But he wasn’t actually stupid. He had a wry sense of humor and knew enough to direct it against himself at times—usually, Donna realized now, times when it would help him in the public eye. She’d found that willingness to laugh at himself rather attractive when she’d first started working for him, a reassuring sign of modesty and geniality that suggested he’d take direction well and be, if not brilliant, then at least harmless if the almost-unthinkable happened and he actually became President—something she’d never really thought was going to happen, when they had such a formidable opponent as Arnold Vinick. But Vinick had been weakened by the nuclear power disaster in southern California and by problems with his conservative base, Bob Russell had been strengthened by Bartlet’s enduring popularity, and if the Democratic candidate had ever had any real modesty or geniality, he’d abandoned them when he’d stepped across the threshold of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and taken possession of the Oval Office. After five months in the White House Donna had become painfully aware that President Russell’s most noticeable qualities were ambition and vanity, shot through with a streak of calculation and even slyness that she knew shouldn’t have surprised her, but somehow did. His views on many issues were surprisingly conservative, he tended to listen to people who reinforced things he already believed, didn’t like opposition or even discussion much, and was proving to be quite capable of harboring a grudge. It was an unsettling combination: simple stupidity would have been much easier to deal with, particularly in the situation she found herself in now, in bed with a man the President had considerable reason to hold a grudge against. The most sensible thing for her to do would be to tell Josh to go back to Connecticut and keep her contact with him to a minimum until she was much more certain that her relationship with him wouldn’t cause trouble with either the Chief of Staff or the President himself.

But she didn’t feel as if she could go on being sensible any longer. Yesterday’s events had shaken her deeply. Life was unpredictable and all too short—she’d learned that before; why was it so easily forgotten? Josh had seemed willing to support her in taking her time to find the right way to balance a relationship with him with the demands of her job, but after seeing him last night she wondered if she’d been asking too much. He hadn’t complained—which, now that she thought about it, she realized was in itself a bad sign with Josh—and he’d given no real hint on the telephone or in their emails that anything was bothering him, but when he’d arrived at her house last night he’d looked tired and thin in a way that worried her. She realized she had no idea how much of his hard-won equilibrium Josh could afford to lose these days, or how difficult it would be for him to get it back. She wondered what else was going to surprise her about him; it had never occurred to her, for instance, that he’d be wondering these past six weeks if she’d changed her mind about him. It amazed her that he hadn’t understood her better than that, hadn’t realized how deep her feelings for him went, how deep they’d always gone. How could two people know each other as well as she knew him and he knew her, and yet miss so much about each other? It was a sobering thought. She would have to be more careful in the future to make sure he did understand her, and she understood him. Sending him back to Connecticut hardly seemed like the best way of assuring that, even if she could have brought herself to do it. Which she really couldn’t. It was all she could do to pull herself out of bed away from him now, to start getting dressed and ready for the day; she had to know she could see him again at the end of it.

When she got back from the bathroom Josh was sitting on the edge of the bed dressed in his jeans and shirt from last night, pulling on his socks. “Don’t you want a shower?” she asked him, surprised. “I’ll get one at my place,” he said. “I should get going before it gets any later, or someone will see me here. I’d meant to get up an hour ago.” It was 5:30; Donna liked to get to the office early.

“You kept your house?” 

“Yeah, I wanted to hang on to it. I could have leased it out, but I get down here often enough that I figured I’d just keep it going and the Westport place too.” It hadn’t been an easy decision. After paying his bills at the clinic in Virginia—Leo had tried to do that for him, but Josh wouldn’t let him—buying the house in Westport had pretty much cleaned out his bank accounts, and yet he hadn’t wanted to let the Georgetown house go. He’d needed to feel he could come back to the city any time, and his work at the Foundation and the President’s library, with his newspaper articles and television appearances, had been giving him enough money to let him get away with it. 

“Will I—see you tonight?”

He looked up from tying his shoe, surprise on his face. “Do you want to?”

“Of course I do, Josh.” 

“Your wish is my command,” he said, grinning then. “Do you want to come to my place, or have me come here? I could make dinner.”

She hesitated. “I’m not sure when I’ll get back. It’s going to be a long day.”

He made a face. “Yeah, it is. Call me when you get in, and I’ll come over.”

“Okay. Can I take a rain check on the dinner, though?”

“Any time.” He kissed her, and headed towards the door, grinning and bouncing on the balls of his feet. Donna shook her head, smiling a little. If there was one thing she had never in her wildest dreams imagined when she was working for Josh, it was this: she, Donna Moss, leaving a house in Georgetown for her job as the White House Press Secretary, and Josh offering to have dinner waiting for her when she got home. 

An hour later she walked into her temporary office at the Pentagon and was told that the President had ordered air strikes against terrorist bases identified by the C.I.A. in Qari’stan, a neighbor of Qumar. The President went on t.v. that night to announce that the country was at war. What with prepping him for that, and the planning session afterwards for the next day, Donna didn’t get home until almost midnight. Josh had been and gone, leaving a note on her kitchen counter: “Leo’s had a heart attack. I’m going to G.W., to wait with Annabeth and Mal.” A little while later her Blackberry buzzed. The White House had just been informed that former President Bartlet had had another attack of M.S., and was in the hospital, paralyzed, in New Hampshire. For both men it must have been the stress of the last two days, she thought sadly, of watching and not being able to do anything anymore, and she wondered what other reverberations the terrorist attacks would end up having in her world.

* * *

The next few days passed in a whirlwind of confusion for Donna, visits to the hospital to see Leo squeezed in between long, chaotic hours at the Pentagon, where she never quite felt as if she knew exactly what was going on. It was touch and go for both Leo and President Bartlet for a while, but they both survived and began to show some signs of progress towards recovery. The White House survived too: the plane had been shot at at the last minute by the Secret Service snipers and had veered off-course, plunging into the ground and exploding a short distance from the building near the visitors’ entrance on the east side. Several staff members and some tourists had been injured in the explosion, but, miraculously, the pilot was the only person killed. The building had sustained some damage but the West Wing was unaffected, and the President finally came out of hiding and moved back into the Residence and the Oval Office, the same day Leo went home from G.W. The staff moved back with him. So, it seemed to Donna, did half of the U.S. military: Lafayette Square and the streets around the White House were closed, not just to cars but to pedestrian traffic as well, and soldiers with M16s and even grenade launchers were everywhere. It was unsettling, a constant reminder that the world around them had changed and might never be the same again.

The weeks that followed had a surreal quality unlike anything Donna could remember before. A few days after the air strikes on Qari’stan a videotape appeared on the internet, showing the head of the terrorist organization still alive and well, mocking the U.S. military and threatening further attacks. The next day the President announced plans to invade Qari’stan with ground troops if his deadline for surrendering the terrorist leaders and abandoning secret Qari’stani chemical and nuclear programs wasn’t met. Congress hastily passed a War Measures Act, ceding its right to declare war to the White House, increasing the speed with which the F.B.I. and other security agencies could get warrants to conduct surveillance against suspected terrorists, and allowing them to hold suspects for up to four weeks without charge. There were more bomb scares around the country, and numbers on Wall Street were plummeting in response to the fear: no one wanted to spend any more time shopping than absolutely necessary, and everyone was avoiding Disneyworld and other high-profile tourist sites. The atmosphere in the White House was one of crisis: everyone around her seemed unbearably tense, tempers flared at the slightest provocation, and while decisions were being taken, she often found herself wondering how they were being made, and by whom. Will and Porter spent a lot of time shut up together in Will’s office and, presumably—it was impossible to tell, with all the doors closed—in the Oval with the President, but something about Will’s tone of voice and the way his jaw clenched when he was talking to Porter during Senior Staff made her think that relations between the Chief of Staff and his Deputy weren’t exactly congenial. The Secretary of Defense was notable by his absence, and stories were beginning to circulate in the pressroom that he was being shut out of discussions about Qari’stan. More rumors were circulating about dissention between the Joint Chiefs. Donna did her best to handle the difficult questions gracefully, trying to keep up the atmosphere of good-natured mutual respect that had marked C.J.’s pressroom without revealing her own confusion or doubts. 

She rarely saw the President, but she caught a glimpse of him one day when she went in to ask Mary, his secretary, something about his schedule for her briefing: the door to the Oval suddenly burst open and he was standing in it. His eyes looked unfocused and seemed to be blinking too often, and a muscle in the side of his face was twitching spasmodically. “Mary,” he started, but then he saw Donna and shut the door abruptly in her face. A moment later the intercom buzzed, and Mary waved Donna out of the room. Donna was thoroughly alarmed, but that evening, before she went home, Mary called her and said the President wanted to speak to her. When she went in he was sitting calmly at his desk, his face perfectly composed. Porter was standing behind him. The President asked her a question or two about the mood of the press, sounding alert and normal, and asked her how she was managing with them. 

“That’s good,” he said, when she told him she thought she was managing fine. “That’s good. We need to keep the press on board with us. We’re at war, you know. Don’t let them forget that, Donna: we need the whole country behind us. And that means the press has got to stay behind us. If they’re not with us, they’re against us. And if they’re against us, they’re against this country. We need patriots, Donna, true patriots. We need a patriot press.” 

“Yes, sir,” Donna said, wondering how she was supposed to accomplish this. 

Porter spoke up then. “We’re making some changes in the way things are done around here, Donna. Your job is to support them, and make sure the press does too. You might want to give more thought to which journalists you’re calling on out there. You’re giving too much attention to the wrong people; why are you calling on Helen Thomas, when you know Jeff Franks will give you an easier time?” 

The President nodded gravely. “Call on the ones who want to support their country, Donna,” he said. “Call on the patriot press. They’re the ones we need.” 

Donna flushed and stammered something in agreement, suddenly overwhelmingly aware of the room she was standing in and who was rebuking her. Porter took her by the elbow and led her to the door. 

“A loyal, patriotic press, and a loyal, patriotic Press Secretary,” he said, giving her a hard look. “Not a naive, idealistic junior assistant. The President likes you, Donna, but we can’t afford to keep anyone around here who isn’t up to doing the job. There are going to be a lot of changes around here. Show us what you can do.” He squeezed her elbow then, hard, and passed her through the door, shutting it firmly behind her. 

The next morning, Porter handed her an announcement as she was walking into the press room: the Secretary of Defense had offered his resignation “for personal reasons,” and the President had accepted it. In his place the President was proposing Patrick Swayne, a Republican from Rhode Island. At the bottom of the announcement Porter had written, “Call on Franks, Hogarth and Green.” Donna hesitated. The storm of voices shouting her name grew louder. Helen Thomas was at the front, calling her name with the rest. Donna looked at her for a long moment, then took a deep breath. “Jeff,” she said, motioning to Jeff Franks. 

“Is this appointment an indication of the President’s bipartisanship?” he asked. 

Donna let out her breath in relief, and smiled. “Yes, Jeff,” she answered. “President Russell understands that this is not a time for partisan dissention, but for all Americans to come together and work for the safety and security of their country. . . .”

* * *

Josh had a routine. He worked from home during the morning, calling in to his office in New York, kicking ideas around and making meetings by email and phone. He usually checked in with President Bartlet in New Hampshire, too, although Abbey kept an eagle eye on their calls and told him in no uncertain terms that he was not to get Jed excited or worked up about anything at all. Then he’d get a sandwich from the deli down the street and eat it while doing more work from his notebook. Every other day after lunch he’d head to the Watergate to spend half an hour talking to Leo; he would have gone more often and stayed longer, but Annabeth asked him not to. She also asked him to keep the conversation away from the news as much as possible: like Abbey, she was sure it was the stress of the recent events that had brought Leo’s and President Bartlet’s attacks on. Leo chafed at the restrictions, and Josh—remembering Donna’s Rules—sympathized, but the man was still so obviously weak that, as he did with President Bartlet, Josh managed to censor the worst of what was happening in the world out of his conversation. The last thing he wanted was to bring on another attack for either of them, or do anything that might compromise their health. 

After seeing Leo he often had meetings to discuss business for his foundation, but by late afternoon he was always back in Georgetown, his laptop and the makings of dinner in his backpack, letting himself into Donna’s house through the back door with the key she’d given him. He’d been deeply relieved when she hadn’t asked him to go back to Connecticut, but it still seemed like a good idea not to attract any more attention than he had to. Residents in Georgetown tended to be too involved with their own careers and social lives to notice what anyone else was doing, and Josh figured that any gossip-hunting photographer looking for a story about the White House Press Secretary would be far more likely to sit in front of her house than at the back, so he always walked through the alleys that ran between his house and hers. At four o’clock in the afternoon there was never anyone around, and the cars in their parking places were all familiar and predictable, obviously not hiding any cameramen. Stealth had never been his long suit, but he could manage that much of it, he thought; it was worth it, if it kept Donna from being upset by some interfering creep’s gossip column, especially now.

When he got to Donna’s house he would settle down with his laptop and cell phone for a while to finish up his own work, and then start getting dinner ready. Cooking was one of the things he’d surprised himself by discovering he liked when he was consciously trying to change his habits and build a more sustainable life for himself in Connecticut. It was like painting the walls, something relatively simple and easy to do that brought a disproportionate feeling of accomplishment with it, and seemed to bring some balance to his life that he realized he’d been badly in need of for a very long time. He liked knowing he was bringing some balance to Donna’s life these days, too. Her schedule was a lot more stressful than it used to be: she got home anytime between eight and eleven most days, and he had to plan dinner around that, but he loved the way her face always lit up when she came in the door and smelled whatever he had going on the stove. He’d pour her a glass of wine, and she’d kick her shoes off and sip it while he put the last touches on the meal and served it. They usually ate in the living room, relaxing on the couch with her feet in his lap while they talked about what had happened that day. 

If he was dismayed by anything she told him he tried to keep it to himself. Accepting the fact that Donna could make different choices than he would and could support a man he found insupportable had been one of things he’d had to work hardest on with Sue Thornton last summer, but he’d done it. He still didn’t think that Bob Russell should be President, but he’d managed to forgive himself, at least in part, for not having won the nomination for someone better, and Sue had made him do a lot of thinking about why Donna might have made the decisions she had when she’d left him to work for Russell, and had got him to see how self-destructive it was to expect anyone to mirror his views exactly, even on something so important. That had been before Russell had won the White House and Donna had become his Press Secretary, of course, but Josh knew the lessons still applied, and he wanted to support her, whether she was doing what he would have done or not. Which was, he reflected a little wryly one evening while he was making supper, another of the good things to come out of his nightmare last year: he’d done some growing up. He could feel the difference in himself, and he liked it. He still wanted to take Bob Russell and kick him across the Tidal Basin into the Potomac, though, so maybe he still had some growing up to do. Or maybe not.

But no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t keep his mouth shut all the time, especially when Donna seemed more than usually troubled by something at the end of the day. “What’s up?” he asked her that night, noticing the worry lines on her face. She sighed, and settled down into the couch, kicking off her shoes. “We have a new Secretary of Defense,” she said, knowing he’d already know that. He followed the news constantly throughout the day. She often wondered how much he missed working at the heart of things: a lot more than he let on, she suspected. She sometimes asked him when he was planning to go back, but his answers were always non-committal. When Bob Russell was out of the White House, she guessed, feeling the familiar stab of guilt she always got whenever she thought about the fact that her career advancement had cost Josh his. It hadn’t had to, of course: he could have found work on the Hill easily enough, except that he’d been there and done that and, she suspected, didn’t see anyone there he admired enough to want to work for. Earl Brennan was long gone; Hoynes had disgraced himself and was gone; and with Matt Santos back in Texas working on health care clinics and local school board issues, there weren’t many shining lights among the Democrats these days. He could have worked at the White House, of course, if he had taken Will up on his offer and joined their campaign, if he hadn’t been so stubborn about things. So stubborn and so idealistic. And so messed up inside by his twisted sense of responsibility and guilt about everything from Matt Santos losing the nomination to a Palestinian terrorist setting off a bomb in Gaza while she was there. . . .

“A Republican!” he said, unable to keep the distaste out of his voice. “What the hell are they thinking of, kicking out Brandt for a Republican?”

“Brandt resigned, Josh. He said he had personal reasons. Swayne has a lot of experience; we need someone in there that people can trust. And bipartisanship could be a good thing for us; we need to show the world that our government is united at a time like this.”

“I’m not in your press pool, Donna. You know I know damn well Brandt didn’t withdraw, and he didn’t leave for personal reasons, unless getting kicked in the ass counts as personal. I gather he wasn’t on board with the President over this Qari’stan thing?”

“I think he really did resign, Josh. He hadn’t been in the loop for quite a while. Not since this whole thing started.”

“If he resigned in protest, why’s he being so mealy-mouthed about it and giving the press this ‘personal reasons’ crap? Why not take a public stand?”

“Maybe loyalty? Patriotism?”

“Loyalty! Patriotism! Donna . . . .”

“Yes, loyalty, Josh. Patriotism. We were attacked. We could be bombed or blown up again at any moment. We’re at war. They attacked the White House, Josh; they attacked the President! George Brandt probably doesn’t want to join forces with them by attacking him too.”

“We’re not at war yet, Donna.”

“We really are, aren’t we, Josh? It’s a different kind of war, a new kind of war, this terrorism, but it’s still war.”

“Maybe, maybe not, but how is invading Qari’stan going to help?”

“The terrorists train there, Josh; the government funds them, even though they pretend they don’t. The government has secret chemical weapons programs, they’re developing nuclear weapons. They’ve got to be stopped.”

“I don’t know, Donna. They’ve probably got some kind of weapons program, sure, but if they do they’re still a long ways from being a threat to us. President Bartlet was briefed about them all the time, and he always said they weren’t a top priority at all.”

“The C.I.A.’s saying something different now. They must have new sources, better info than they did before.”

“I’m not so sure, Donna. We had good people working on this before, good information. None of the reports we’re hearing make any sense. You know how crippled Qari’stan’s economy has been. I can’t believe they could have achieved that kind of capability yet, and we have no reason to think they’d use it against us if they did. Against Israel’s a concern, maybe, but even that doesn’t really fit with what we’ve seen from this man so far.”

“He’s done brutal things to his own people! He’s a tyrant.”

“He is, but the world is full of tyrants. War is a huge commitment, and usually ends up doing more harm than good. You know that. We have to prioritize; if they’re not attacking us and they’re not carrying out a genocide, we need to deal with them through other means. Diplomacy. Containment. Sanctions, maybe. The U.N. We can’t just sail in and right every wrong in the world by ourselves; it won’t work. And attacking an Arab country is the surest possible way to build more resentment against the U.S. and breed more terrorists who want to attack us.”

“Qari’stan is attacking us; they trained the terrorists there.” 

“Did they? The ones we’ve been able to find anything out about all came from Qumar. And the Qumari radicals hate Qari’stan; Hakim may be a despot, but he’s a secular despot who’s built a secular society and works against almost everything they stand for. They loathe him; they want him overthrown. Why would he let them set up training camps in his bit of desert, or give them any support at all? If we want to find out who’s funding fundamentalist terror, we should look at Qumar.”

“Qumar is our ally.”

“I know. And they’ve had a ton of oil and money, and we’ve never said boo to them because of it, even though they don’t let women vote or drive and beat them if they get raped, or even if their headscarves slip and they show the world a little of their face or hair.”

“We’re their ally, too. Why would they sponsor terrorism against us?”

“It doesn’t have to be a state-sponsored thing, you know. All it takes is some member of the royal family to hear God talking to him on the road to Mecca, and he’s got all the money you could want to do whatever he thinks God is telling him to do, and no one’s going to say anything, because he’s a member of the king’s family and you just can’t do that in that society; if you’re one of the royals, you can do pretty much what you want as long as you’re discreet about it. The money wouldn’t go directly to terrorists; he’d give it to some religious group, and they’d pass it on. Or she would. Not all the Qumari women see themselves as victims, you know; there are plenty who think every woman in the world should be wearing the chador in respect to Allah, and who’d like to see all you half-naked American sluts stoned for dressing the way you do.”

“I’m a slut now, am I?” Donna tried to smile.

“A shockingly depraved slut, and I hope I’m going to get the benefit of your sluttishness sometime soon, you know.”

She set her plate down on the coffeetable and leaned back against the cushions. No matter how tired she was, she was never too tired for what Josh did to her, and she really didn’t feel like talking about any more of the things that had been worrying her today. Josh was at once the easiest person in the world for her to confide in, and the hardest; his opinion still mattered too much to her. For all she’d accomplished over the past couple of years, she still wanted his approval—and yet she wanted to be independent and make her own decisions too. She knew he didn’t like the man she had helped make President or the way he was leading the country now, and she didn’t know how to begin to tell him about the strange incident in Mary’s office that day, or how the President and Porter had dressed her down in the Oval Office, or the confused mix of emotions she was feeling about her job and the way she was being asked to do it. She didn’t even want to think about it, much less talk about it with him, tonight. She wanted to feel his closeness, not to be reminded of all the ways in which they were still separate and apart. “How about right now?” she said in her most seductive voice, reaching out with a foot to hook his waist and pull him towards her. He put his plate down too, and both of them found better things to think about than which countries might be sponsoring terrorism and what constituted valid reasons for going to war.

The next day the President announced that Qari’stan had proven intractable in refusing to meet his requests, and U.S. troops rolled into the country from Qumar. 

* * *

(September 2, 2007)

Donna sat at her desk, gathering up her papers, getting ready to go home. She was exhausted. It had been the longest, most emotionally draining day she could remember since 6/16, or the weekend she had drive to see Josh in Connecticut and ended up in bed with him. And yet nothing particularly unusual had happened during most of it—not since she had stepped through the doors of the White House, anyway. 

Her news briefings had been distressing but predictable: a helicopter carrying twelve U.S. troops had been shot down in Qari’stan, at least sixty Qari’stani had been killed or injured in a mortar attack by U.S. forces on one of their cities, and she had had to announce another heightened anti-terrorism domestic security alert. Will, Swayne, and Porter had been sequestered in the Oval Office most of the day, apparently working on the final language of a new anti-terrorism bill—a revision of the War Measures Act, which was about to expire—that they were planning to take to Congress the next day. She’d asked to see it when they were finished so she could prep for her press announcement, but had been told she’d have to make do with a synopsis instead. “I’ll wait till you’re finished,” she’d told Will in Senior Staff that morning; “it really helps if I’m familiar with the language, and all the clauses.” He’d hesitated, blinking behind his glasses, but Porter had stepped in smoothly: “You’ll have to do without it, Donna. We won’t be finished until the wee hours, and I’m sure you like to get your beauty sleep to look your prettiest for the press.” Donna had glared at him, Will had cleared his throat, but Porter had settled back in his chair and crossed his hands over his considerable stomach, smiling. Will frowned, but said nothing, and Donna’s heart had sunk. She was still thinking about the incident as she looked over the files on her desk, putting the ones she needed in her briefcase to take home, and trying not to let her thoughts dwell on that other, pressingly personal thing that had been hovering on the edges of her mind and threatening to overwhelm her all through that long day.

Nobody really understood the relationship between Will and Harold Porter, or between either man and Bob Russell, but everyone had suspected for some time that there had been some shift in the balance of power, and the Deputy C.O.S. had come to wield at least as much sway with President as his actual Chief of Staff had. Perhaps it had happened as long ago as that day Donna had been called into the Oval Office and dressed down by both Porter and the President; Donna had thought at the time that Will was simply busy somewhere else and had asked Porter to speak to her for him, but when she had finally told Josh about it, he had found everything about the incident disturbing, including Will’s absence. They both hoped things would change, and Will would find a way to reassert himself with the President. The country had always needed good leadership, but never more than it did now. 

Everyone had expected the war to be over quickly, but the Qari’stani people had not taken kindly to their country being invaded, many of them apparently preferring life under an oppressive dictator to having foreigners blowing up their cities and marching through their streets. Two months after the invasion, large parts of Qari’stan still remained out of U.S. control, the Qari’stani dictator had escaped capture and was on the run, and—most disconcerting of all--no camps for training terrorists and no secret sites for manufacturing chemical or nuclear weapons had yet to be found. To make matters worse, terrorist threats against the U.S. appeared to be on the rise. Swayne had devised a system of color-coded security alerts that were supposed to put citizens on their guard at times when the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. thought from the “chatter” they listened to that another terrorist attack might be imminent. Donna dutifully announced each change from yellow to orange or orange back to yellow as she was asked to, trying to appear calm and resolute for the press and the cameras, all the while wondering almost every day whether she was really helping the situation or whether her announcements were doing more harm than good. If being on the alert could help prevent another day like 6/16 then she wanted to do everything she could to alert people, but the announcements she was given were always so vague that it was impossible to know what sort of “suspicious activity” one was supposed to be looking for. Tension in the country was at an all-time high, watchdog groups were reporting many incidents of harassment and outright violence against Muslims, and virtually anyone who looked even vaguely Islamic or spoke with any kind of foreign accent was a target for hostility and exclusion. Donna was becoming seriously concerned that Americans might end up doing to themselves what the terrorists wanted but couldn’t achieve alone, destroying the fabric of American society with suspicion and hate. 

One might have expected a Democratic administration to be alert to that sort of thing and take a stand against it. But Bob Russell, Donna had come to realize, was a Democrat primarily because the western Colorado miners who’d first elected him trusted a blue candidate more than a red one on labor issues. On social ones they were fundamentally conservative, and Russell had met their requirements well. He had been quite brilliant at one thing, finding a way to appeal to both the mining families he needed to vote for him and the mine owners he needed to fund his campaigns—which was precisely how his name had made its way onto the shortlist of candidates for the Vice Presidency after Hoynes resigned, when Bartlet and Leo were being strongarmed by the right. Harold Porter had known him back in his Colorado days, had won his trust on the campaign by supporting his centrist (and sometimes even right-of-centrist) tendencies, and Russell had insisted on giving him a plum job afterwards as one of his chief advisors. Will, Donna suspected, had never been comfortable with Porter as his Deputy, but hadn’t been given much choice. Donna wasn’t comfortable with him, either, and the idea of his voice actually influencing the President more than Will’s disturbed her deeply. And yet what could she do? She thought about resigning every day, but she knew it would make very little difference to the way things were done. She might really be able to do more good staying where she was. The President liked her personally—she knew that, and Porter had confirmed it. Even if he didn’t encourage her to advise him on policy matters there might still be opportunities to give Will some support in encouraging Russell to go in a better direction. No, she shouldn’t resign: staying in her job and doing what good she could there was surely more important than ever. 

But could she stay in her job? With the whole White House so caught up in concerns about terrorism and fighting a war, she had never found the right moment to talk to Will about her relationship with Josh, and now was obviously not the right time. And yet she had to talk to him; she had to. She really didn’t have a choice anymore. Not after what she’d learned that morning. She’d been a whirl of emotions about it all day, and whenever she’d let herself drop her focus on work and think about herself and her own life she’d felt as if the whirlwind was sweeping her away. She’d never felt so confused by her own feelings: terror was probably the most dominant one, but there was joy there too, wild, dizzying joy that seemed completely irrational and dropped away into terror whenever she stopped to probe the logic behind it, but kept springing irrepressibly back again in the strangest, most confusing way. Yes, whether it was a good time or not, she really did have to talk to Will. But first she had to talk to Josh. 

She flipped through the files she’d been putting into her briefcase, checking to make sure she had all the ones she needed. Being the compulsive she was, she pulled out the two or three most important ones to make sure their contents were complete. Yes, everything was here—but wait. What was this, in the folder she’d made for her prep work on the anti-terrorism bill? There seemed to be a lot more here than she remembered putting in. Here was the brief, uninformative summary of the bill that Porter had given her that morning, along with his irritating comments about getting her beauty sleep. But here, underneath it, was a fat stack of papers that looked like . . . yes, it was: a full-text copy of the bill. It hadn’t been there before. She wondered when it had come in: she’d been in her office most of the day, even eating lunch there—this must have gone in during her briefing, or else one of the times she’d left for a few minutes to use the bathroom. It had today’s date on it, and a stamp, “Final Copy.” They must have finished early, and either Will or Porter had brought it by. Whichever one had done it, it seemed odd that he’d put it directly into her file like that, under the other papers. Jennifer, her assistant, wouldn’t have done that—she always left important papers in Donna’s inbox or directly on her desk, and she always put a yellow sticky note on them telling what they were, who had brought them in and when, and anything else that might be helpful. She was a very good assistant; Donna had trained her herself.

Well, now she would have to read this tonight, as well as talking to Josh. Maybe she should put off talking to Josh? No, she couldn’t do that. For once the personal would have to take priority. She’d work on this afterwards, even if she had to lose some of that sleep Porter had been so condescending about. She put the newly-fattened file carefully back into her briefcase, gathered up her purse, and walked out of the building to her car. 

* * *

“So, how did it go today?” Josh asked her, giving her a quick kiss and handing her a glass of wine before turning his attention back to the stir-fry he had going on the stove. It smelled delicious. 

“Oh, okay,” Donna said, hearing the exhaustion in her voice. She started to take a sip of the wine, then blinked, stopped, and set the glass down. Josh stuck a fork in the pan and tasted what was on the end of it, then took a knife out of the block on the counter and started to chop some ginger root. “Needs more ginger,” he said, giving her a dimpled grin. “This will just be a couple of minutes; why don’t you go sit down?” She took his suggestion gladly. The joy and terror she’d been feeling all day had grown exponentially during her drive home. She had no idea how to start this conversation—no idea what she should say, no idea how he was going to react when she’d said it—and she was glad to put it off a little longer. 

He brought their plates in and set them on the coffeetable, then flopped down on the couch beside her. “Hard day?” he asked, his voice concerned and tender. She nodded wordlessly, suddenly afraid that if she said anything at all she might start to cry. He swung his arm around her and pulled her close to him, taking her hands in his free one, squeezing them reassuringly. She looked down at them. It was his left hand wrapped around hers, and he had his sleeves rolled up from cooking. She could see one of the scars running down the inside of his arm. 

“Josh,” she said suddenly, her voice sounding choked. “Have you told your mother?”

“About us?” he asked, sounding puzzled. “No, I haven’t. I thought you wanted to wait until you talked to Will. You haven’t told your family, have you?”

She shook her head, and swallowed.

“What’s the matter, then?” 

She swallowed again.

“That wasn’t what I meant,” she said, her voice tighter than before. She was still looking down at his hand wrapped around hers. “I meant, have you ever told her about—what happened? About what you did, last summer?” Her chest felt so tight she could hardly breathe. She glanced up at his face: Josh flushed, and dropped his eyes to their joined hands too. There was a long pause.

“No,” he said at last, so quietly she could hardly hear him. “No, I haven’t.”

“Why, Josh?” 

His flush deepened. “I—just couldn’t, Donna. You know why. It would—upset her. It would upset her a lot. I just couldn’t do that to her, not after—not after everything else. I just couldn’t.”

“Won’t she be more upset when she finds out, if you haven’t told her?”

“She won’t find out, if I have anything to say about it.”

“What did you tell her, then, about where you were, last summer?”

“I told her the truth, mostly, at first—that I was taking a couple of weeks’ vacation at a place Leo recommended, down in Virginia. That I was taking hikes, working out, eating well, getting plenty of sleep. She was delighted.”

“You were there a lot more than a couple of weeks.”

“Yeah, I was. I always called her from my cell phone. After a while I maybe sort of let her think that I was back in D.C.”

“So, you lied to her, Josh? You weren’t honest with her? To your mother, about something that important, something like that—you lied to her? You’re still lying to her?”

Josh pulled his arm away from her shoulders and untangled their hands. 

“Yeah,” he said, his voice sounding rough, “yeah, that’s what I’m doing, more or less. What does it matter, Donna? Why do you care? What should I have done? Said, ‘Mom, I just had this breakdown and I tried to kill myself. I cut my arm open with one of the kitchen knives you gave me, that you’d sharpened the last time you were visiting and told me to be careful not to cut myself with, that was still sharp because I never used it, I never ate a meal in my house that wasn’t take-out from the Chinese place down the street or the pizza place around the corner?’ How would that make her feel? ‘Mom, I know I’m your only son, the only child you have left. I remember how you cried when you lost my sister, I remember how you cried when you lost my father, but I’m such a goddamned selfish bastard that didn’t matter to me, I didn’t care anymore whether I hurt you or anyone else, I just wanted to stop hurting myself. I hated myself and I just wanted it to stop, damn it, and I was so screwed-up the only way I could think of to stop hurting was to hurt myself worse. So you almost lost your son and guess what? He’s a fucked-up son-of-a-bitch, which you’ve known for a while now, I guess, but you thought he’d gotten over it, you thought you could breathe again and not worry every waking minute about your boy who came through that fire a twisted-up mess, and then he got shot and got PTSD, but now you can’t. But you really can, because it’s all right, I went to this place and talked to a bunch of people for a really long time, much longer than I did before, and I’ve changed my life and now you don’t have to worry, it isn’t going to happen again.’ And it’s not, it’s really not. But what do you think the chances are of her believing that, Donna? She’s my mother, for God’s sake, of course she’s going to worry, of course she’s going to be upset. Why would you want me to do that to her? What would be the point? What good would it do?” 

By the time he finished, his breath was coming in ragged jerks, and Donna had started to cry. 

“I’m sorry, Josh,” she choked out. “I shouldn’t have asked that. I’m sorry.”

He took a deep breath. “It’s okay,” he said wearily, leaning back against the cushions and rubbing his hands over his face. “It’s okay. But—why did you? Why were you even thinking about it? With everything else that’s going on, I’d have thought that would be the last thing on your mind.”

Donna looked down at her hands, still folded together in her lap. She squeezed them together tightly to keep them from shaking, but she could see them trembling a little anyway. Her voice shook, too. 

“I guess—I just—was thinking about what it was like, to be a mother, Josh. I’ve been thinking about it all day. About everything that can happen to children, everything that does happen to them, every day. Young children, grown-up children. They can be walking to school or sitting on the subway or having a fun time at Disneyworld with their parents, and get blown up by a bomb. They can walk into their office in the most protected building in the world, and have a plane fly into it and die. They can walk out of a building and get shot, or step into a car that blows up and almost die. They can be safe in their own homes and a fire can start and they can die. They can end up hurting so much they want to hurt themselves and die. I don’t know how my mother copes with the things that have happened to me, and she’s had so much less to have to deal with than your mother has. I was wondering how your mother managed, how anyone manages. How I would manage. How I will manage.”

He looked at her, bewilderment mixed with the beginnings of comprehension in his face.

“Donna?” he said, reaching out to touch her hands again. “What are you telling me? Are you—” His voice choked and he couldn’t finish the sentence, but his eyes finished it for him.

She looked down at his hand folded over hers, and then up at his face, full of emotion. She could see concern in it, and questioning, but there was something else there too, a spark of joy in his eyes that his worry about her couldn’t quite keep down, and through all her fears and doubts she felt an answering spark of joy light up inside her in response. 

“Yes,” she said. “I am.” She looked at the smile starting to spread across his face and smiled back, adding, “We are. I guess there were those couple of times . . . .”

“Are you . . . okay with it?” he whispered, and she could see his smile fading and the anxiety taking its place. “Because if you’re not—I know this is a bad time for you—it has to be whatever you’re comfortable with, whatever you want.” 

She thought she’d never loved him quite as much as she did then. 

“I have no idea how I’m going to do this, Josh. I’m totally terrified, but—I’m so excited, too. I want it. I really do.”

He started to smile again. “We, Donna,” he said softly. “How we’re going to do this. You don’t have to manage by yourself. We’ll be managing together.”

“Are you . . . okay with it too?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I am. More than okay; it’s—something I’ve wanted for a long time now.”

“You have?”

“Yeah, I have.” 

“You’ve never said anything.”

“I didn’t want to pressure you, Donna. You had to decide what you wanted. You still do. If you don’t want this—” 

She put a finger over his lips. “I do,” she said. “I really do.”

“But there’s just one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“We’re really going to have to let people know about us, you know.”

“I know.”

“Before they can figure it out for themselves.”

“Yes.”

“Which means . . .”

“Which means soon. I know. I’ll talk to Will about it tomorrow. Oh, Josh—you’re sure about this? About having a baby? With me?”

“Donna,” he said, in the most tender voice she had ever heard, “I’ve never been surer about anything in my life.” 

He put out an arm and pulled her to him, and for a little while they were both perfectly happy, just holding each other and talking softly about everything they hoped and dreamed their child could have and be.

* * *

Josh propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at Donna, sleeping beside him. The long curtains on her bedroom window were parted a little, letting a shaft of light from the streetlamp outside slant into the room. It traced the outlines of her face and glowed softly on her hair, spread out like moonshine on the pillow around her. The clock on the table beside the bed told him it was just after one; he had three or four hours yet before he had to slip out and go home. He should be sleeping, he knew, but he couldn’t sleep. He was glad she could get a little rest. Without whatever her hormones were doing to her, he didn’t have a chance of it.

His emotions were about as mixed as it was possible for them to be. Part of him was giddy with elation: Donna was pregnant; they were going to have a child; he was going to be a father. But another part was almost sick with fear. Donna was pregnant; they were going to have a child; he was going to be a father. How was he going to do that? He didn’t know if he was ready for this; he didn’t know if either of them was ready for this. He was sure Donna would be a wonderful mother—but was this the right time for her? Her White House job meant so much to her, and she’d had it for less than a year. She might not have to give it up, of course: maybe Will and the President would be okay with this; maybe the press wouldn’t give her too hard a time for having a child with one of the administration’s most biting critics and her former boss; maybe she could take maternity leave for a couple of months and then go back. But that meant that he, Josh, would have to step up to the plate and do the at-home-dad thing, and that was a truly frightening thought. He had no preparation for this, no experience at all. He’d never been good with babies—they howled for no apparent reason, he didn’t know how to get them to stop, and whenever he’d had to hold one he’d been scared stiff he was going to drop it and it would break. He wasn’t even sure he’d be any good with bigger children, but at least you could talk to them and they could talk to you and tell you what was the matter when they were crying in the middle of the night. Living in the house in Connecticut he’d discovered that he wanted a family of his own, but wanting something and being suddenly confronted with the reality of having it were two very different things. Breathe, Josh, he told himself. Take a long, deep breath. It will be all right. You can do this; you know you can do this. But he wasn’t so sure. What if he messed up? He wasn’t really what he considered prime dad material. Look at the mess he’d made of so much of his own life so far: he’d been pretty successful in his career, of course, until last year, but in just about everything else . . . . And then there was the problem of his career. He’d been finding it harder than he wanted to admit, being on the fringes of things here in Washington, with Donna going off to the White House every day without him. It had been easier in Connecticut and New York, where inside-the-Beltway gossip wasn’t on everybody’s lips in every coffeeshop, and politics wasn’t the main thing on everyone’s minds. He liked what he was doing with the Foundation and thought it had a lot of potential to make a real difference in the world, but he’d never envisioned doing it for the rest of his life—he’d thought of it as something that would keep him busy and useful while he put himself back together after last summer’s flame-out, but he’d always expected that he’d end up back in Washington doing something significant in politics again someday. And maybe he still could, but it was certainly going to be a lot harder to do if he was going to make bringing up a child a big part of his day. There was day-care, of course, or a nanny, but he wasn’t sure he wanted this child to be brought up by a day-care worker or a nanny. He wanted this baby to have the best, and nothing but the best, and in his mind that meant a parent at home while it was small, even if the parent was as inept as he was likely to be. This baby—Donna’s baby, his baby. His baby. It was really just the most incredible thought, that inside the beautiful woman lying beside him was his baby, his child. He was glad Donna was asleep and couldn’t see him looking down at her and his eyes starting to fill with tears of joy and fear and what seemed like every other shade of emotion in between.

Because she was asleep he let himself go for a minute, but then he pulled himself together and went into the bathroom to wash his face. He looked at himself in the mirror afterwards, wondering again how he was going to do this, but knowing he would probably manage, just because he had to. It was as simple as that, really. Donna needed him to, this baby would need him to, and he wasn’t going to let himself let either of them down. 

He wandered into the living room and stood by the couch, looking at the papers Donna had left on the coffeetable. They’d spent an hour snuggling and talking about the baby and the future before she’d sat up and said she really had to try to get some work done before tomorrow. She’d read for a little while, but could hardly keep her eyes open. The fifteenth time he’d heard her yawn, Josh had finally suggested she get some sleep and get up an hour earlier to read the most important stuff in the morning. It was a sign of how exhausted she was that she hadn’t argued with him at all. 

One fat stack of paper was sitting on top of the others, obviously the one Donna was most concerned about getting through. The title caught his eye: “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act.” The reason for this unwieldy nomenclature was obvious when he ran his eye down the page and saw the acronym it produced: U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act. There was no “classified” stamp, so he picked it up. He wasn’t going to sleep, and it might help Donna in the morning if he’d done some of the detailed reading for her. He could make a summary and put stickies on to show her which passages she needed to look at and which she didn’t, the way she used to do for him. He opened the cover and started to read.

* * *

Donna stumbled out of bed and into the shower an hour earlier than usual that morning. She was on her way out of the kitchen with a pot of coffee when she realized she wasn’t alone. Josh was sitting on the living room couch, surrounded by the papers she’d been planning to get to work on.

“Josh?” she called out in surprise, coming over to sit beside him.

“Yeah?”

“You’re still here?” She was up early, but she knew he usually left well before this so he wouldn’t be seen by curious neighbors or gossip-hungry newspaper writers looking for a story on the White House Press Secretary and her love life.

“Yeah. I was—reading.”

“Reading?”

“Yeah.”

“Didn’t you sleep?”

“Nah. Couldn’t.”

“Excited? Worried?”

“A bit of both, at first. And then—I read this.”

“The bill?”

“Yeah. Thought I’d help out, since you weren’t going to have a lot of time this morning, and I wasn’t sleeping anyway.”

“How altruistic of you.”

“Yeah, I’m like that.”

“Forcing yourself to do something you don’t have the slightest interest in, like getting the inside scoop on the White House’s secret new anti-terrorism proposals.” 

“Secret? Donna, there wasn’t any ‘Classified’ stamp on it; I wouldn’t have read it if—” Donna couldn’t help smiling.

“I’m just kidding, Josh. I know there wasn’t any stamp on it; I wouldn’t have brought it home from the office if there was.”

“Why did you say ‘secret,’ then?” He didn’t sound reassured; there was still a tension in his voice and face she didn’t understand.

“I don’t know, I just—they’ve been keeping this awfully quiet. It’s just been Will and Porter working on it, mostly Porter, with Swayne and the President. Mostly Porter and Swayne, I think, and Porter’s been treating it as if was the nuclear codes or something. I was amazed I got this; I didn’t think he even wanted me to see it. I asked to see a complete text yesterday and he wouldn’t let me have the draft they were working on. Gave me a one-page summary that didn’t look any different from HR-2010.”

“The War Measures Act.”

“That’s right. It expires next week; this is supposed to replace it.”

“Porter wouldn’t let you see a draft yesterday?”

“No. They were going to work on it more during the day, but they couldn’t have been going to do much, really—just cosmetic stuff. I was surprised when this showed up on my desk. He’d made such a thing about my only needing the summary. Said I wouldn’t have time to read the full text, and he wanted me to get my beauty sleep.”

“Patronizing bastard.”

“He really is an absolute prick.”

“But then he gave you this?”

“Someone did; I don’t know who. It was strange, really. . . .”

“Strange? How?”

“It just showed up in my folder. I saw it there when I was packing my briefcase. Someone had slipped it in, behind the summary. Jennifer would never do that, and I can’t imagine why Porter or Will would, either. Unless . . . .”

“Unless?”

“Unless—well, I know this sounds crazy, but—I couldn’t help thinking—unless whoever put it there didn’t want anyone else to see it. You know, if someone came into the room and was looking at my desk or something.” 

She only had to say it to know how silly it sounded, and felt embarrassed for ever having entertained the thought.

“That’s interesting.” Josh didn’t sound as if he was teasing, which surprised her.

“That’s nuts, you mean.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Come on, Josh—of course it’s nuts. I expect Will or Porter just didn’t want me to forget it, so he slipped it into the right folder. It’s kind of odd, but that’s all. I’m probably just being hormonal about it.”

“I’m not so sure, Donna. I can think of a couple of other reasons why either Will or Porter might have given you this, or even someone else—one of their assistants, maybe, the one who typed it up.”

“What reasons, Josh?”

“One would be to try to get you into trouble. Porter doesn’t want you to see this; if it turns up in your folder and you talk about it in your briefing today, he’ll accuse you of insubordination, or something like that. Make you look bad; maybe lose you your job.”

“That’s a really creepy thought, Josh. But why would one of the assistants do that? They don’t have any reason not to like me.”

“I wasn’t thinking of the assistants for that one.”

“Will wouldn’t do that, Josh. If he doesn’t like me, he can just fire me.”

“I wasn’t thinking of Will for that one either, Donna. I was thinking of Porter.”

“Porter? But he’s the one who didn’t want me to read it.”

“He’s the one who said he didn’t want you to read it.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah. I see. Yuck, Josh . . . .”

“But there’s another possibility too, Donna. I think it’s really a lot more likely than the first.”

“What’s that? I hope it isn’t as nasty.”

“It could be, or not.”

“What is it?” 

“The second possibility is that someone wants the information in this to get out, but doesn’t want to be the one to put it out there. That person is afraid. The nasty possibility is that he or she doesn’t mind if you get in trouble for putting it out there, as long as he or she doesn’t.”

“And the not-so-nasty possibility?”

“The person knows you’re too smart to do that, and will find another way to get this out without exposing yourself.”

“I could leak it to a journalist.”

“You could. That would be pretty easy to trace, though.”

“I could leak it to a friend who would leak it to a journalist.”

“That’s better.”

“I could leak it to a friend who would leak it to a friend who would leak it to a journalist.”

“That’s better still. Or maybe not. How eager is the press these days to publish a story the White House doesn’t want out?”

“Not eager at all.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“There are some independent voices still, Josh. Helen Thomas, for instance.”

“She’s not getting the questions these days, is she?” Donna blushed. “But even if she was, her editors would have to be willing to publish what she wrote. And based on what we’ve seen of their coverage of the build-up to the war and the war itself, I’d say the editors of the major papers were all in line behind the President, Porter and Swayne.”

“They’re afraid.”

“They’re afraid. The papers’ owners are afraid. Bombs on subways, truck bombs driving into shopping malls, airplanes flying into buildings, Disneyworld—of course they’re afraid. I’m afraid, damn it; we’re all afraid. And of course the intelligence community needs to be able to get information if we’re not going to see more of this, and sometimes they need to be able to get a lot of it and get it quickly. But there has to be serious oversight; there have to reasonable limits; we can’t have any branch of government able to do anything it wants. There are things we should be more afraid of than bombs and airplanes, things we have to be more afraid of, or we’ll lose everything we’ve got. Everything that makes us different from the people driving the truck bombs and flying the airplanes, everything they’d like to see us lose.”

“You know, Josh, I was falling asleep when I was reading that last night, and I didn’t get very far before you made me go to bed. Everything I read was innocuous enough, just a rehash of the War Measures Act, which is what I was expecting. You obviously don’t think it’s innocuous, or that someone hid that bill in my folder just because they have a compulsive tidy streak. So—what is it, exactly, that’s in there that I might be tempted to risk my job to leak?”

“Just . . . the Constitution, Donna.”

“The Constitution?”

“The Constitution. The Bill of Rights.”

“I thought the Constitution was in the Archives?” 

“It won’t matter where the Constitution is if that bill gets passed, Donna. It will just be a piece of dirty old paper crumbling away in a vault somewhere. If that passes and the Supreme Court doesn’t strike it down, the Bill of Rights won’t mean much anymore.”

“This bill is supposed to be to fight terrorism, isn’t it, Josh?”

“It’s supposed to be. Maybe that’s what your guys really think it’s for. But according to this, the President can have any person he suspects of terrorist activity—any person he suspects of associating with people suspected of terrorist activity—arrested and held without charge. Indefinitely. Without a lawyer, without a trial. Habeas corpus is suspended; heck, the Miranda warning’s suspended. Any person, on the authority of one person, the President, can be whisked away in secret and held in secret, without access to a lawyer, without access to his family, without any legal protections at all. He could be held anywhere, for any length of time, and as far as I can see, just about anything could be done to him, because he’s considered an ‘enemy combatant,’ outside the protection of civil law.”

“But an enemy combatant would be protected by military law, surely? By the Geneva Convention?”

“Not according to the fine print in this. The Geneva Convention’s just a convention now; we’ve declared ourselves free of its pointless restrictions when they interfere with our God-given right to defend ourselves, even if that means torturing people to try to get information they may or may not have. And the ‘enemy combatant’ doesn’t have to be a soldier, either. He could be a civilian. She could be a civilian. It doesn’t matter.”

“Josh, that’s impossible.”

“That’s here. Oh, the language is discreet, but that’s what it adds up to. And that’s not all. There are clauses in here allowing the N.S.A. to obtain any kind of private information on anyone they want, without a warrant. No judicial oversight required. Any N.S.A. officer can sign off on a letter requiring the recipient to hand over whatever he’s being asked for: telephone records, banking records, medical records, computer records. Heck, even library records. The records don’t have to be the property of the person being asked for them—bank managers could be asked to give up the financial records of any of their customers, doctors could be asked to give up medical records for their patients. And the customer or the patient will never know.”

“Doctors would never do that.”

“They wouldn’t have much choice. If they refuse, they can be charged and sent to jail. Their trials won’t be public, though; the whole process is secret. No one’s ever supposed to know about these letters. The person who gets one of these letters is told they can never discuss it with anyone, not even a lawyer. Even if they comply with the request in the letter, they could still go to jail if they tell anyone that they got it. Anyone. Not even a lawyer, not even a doctor, not even a priest or a rabbi or a clergyman. And they don’t have to agree to that, the way you or I did when we went to work at the White House; they could be the most hopeless blabbermouths in the world and know it, they could have a drinking problem or a drug problem and talk when they’re high, it doesn’t matter—if the N.S.A. finds out they’ve said anything, whoosh, that’s it—secret trial, secret jail term. Because, you know, they’re enemy combatants now too.”

“Josh, are you sure you read this right?”

“I’m sure, Donna.”

“It will never pass.”

“You told me last night that Will and Porter were confident of a win.”

“But that’s because the Congressmen they’ve been talking to all think this is just a renewal of the War Measures Act.”

“Do they? All of them?”

“Well . . . .”

“The leadership have been complete sheep so far, Donna; they’ve done anything the White House has asked. They handed over the right to declare war without a second glance. They listened to all that talk about terrorist training camps and chemical weapons programs and nuclear capability programs and cheered on the invasion of Qari’stan without an intelligent question, without a blink. The handful of representatives who did blink, who did ask intelligent questions, were all branded ‘unpatriotic’ and got their houses egged and their families threatened by flag-waving yahoos who put bumper-stickers on their cars that say, ‘My Country, Right Or Wrong.’ And the rest of the House and the Senate just wave their flags and watch their numbers going up. Do you really think they’re going to protest anything this White House sells them when it’s got the word ‘patriot’ stuck all over it?”

“Some of them will, Josh. You know that. You know we have some good people in Congress. Andi, Matt Skinner . . . .”

“Some of them will. Maybe more than some. But it depends on how much time they get to think about it.”

“What do you mean?”

“When’s this going to the Hill?”

“Today, I think.”

“And when’s it being voted on?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I’ll lay you ten to one that bill doesn’t go anywhere near the Hill until after six tonight. And if it doesn’t, I’ll lay you twenty to one the House Leader will call the vote on it tonight.”

“When half the members won’t be there.”

“When at least half the members won’t be there, or will have to rush back from their families and get the bill off their desks as they’re walking in. But even the ones who stayed in their offices won’t have had time to read this. It’s six hundred pages long, and most of it just repeats the wording of the WMA, the way everyone’s expecting it to. The scary stuff all comes in the last fifty or sixty pages. Not right at the end, either, but sort of tucked in just before the last section, so someone who tries to skim the beginning and the end would miss it.”

“The Senate?”

“Same deal—they’ll get it tomorrow and rush to a vote. The Republicans will pretty much all be on board with this anyway, and the Democrats won’t be looking to make a stand against their own administration. It will just be a few independent-minded types on either side the White House will have to worry about, and there aren’t enough of them to hold this up.”

“What about afterwards?”

“Who’s going to make a fuss? No one wants to look like he was asleep at the wheel while this was going through.”

“The press?”

“I thought we agreed the press had pretty much all turned into sheep too.”

“The Supreme Court, Josh?”

“The ACLU will bring a lawsuit, of course. But you know how long it takes anything to get up to the Court. And I wouldn’t count on this Court to hurry anything along; they’re not exactly the most progressive group we’ve ever had up there right now.”

“We’ve got to stop it.”

“I think we’ve got to try.”

“We should call Leo, Josh. He’s still got a lot of influence in the Party. He’d help. And President Bartlet—”

“We can’t take it to them, Donna; they’re not strong enough yet to have to deal with this, either of them. Abbey and Annabeth would skin me alive if I even tried to talk to them about it, and I’m not going to be responsible for killing Leo McGarry or President Bartlet. I can do this myself.”

“I’ll resign. I’ll make sure every member of the White House press corps has a copy of this, and then I’ll resign. They’re not all sheep, Josh—I know Helen Thomas will write about it. And some of the others.”

“I was thinking about that, but—I don’t know. That’s a big step, Donna; that’s your career.”

“Not my whole career. I’ll be able to get another job, Josh.”

“Maybe. I don’t like it, though. Anyone who could write this legislation has no scruples. They could say things, do things to make it so you wouldn’t work in this city again for a long time. Not in politics. I don’t want you to have to do that, Donna.”

“If . . . that’s what I have to do, Josh. It would draw attention to the issue. It would make a point. I could get the discussion going, keep it going for a while. I think it’s the right thing to do.”

“I don’t like it. I don’t want to think about what they’d say about you, what they’d come up with. Your qualifications, your finances, your personal life, you and me in the White House or why I first hired you—if Porter is the kind I think he is, he’d go after anything to discredit you, and even though there’s nothing there they could make it look as if there was. Listen, Donna—where’s Will in all this? I never thought he’d be the kind who’d okay something like this.”

“I don’t know; I don’t know where he is in it. I think this has been Porter’s project, Porter and Swayne.”

“Will’s out of the loop? The Chief of Staff?”

“I’m not sure. He’s been in some of the discussions, I know, but I can see he’s not getting on with Porter, and Porter isn’t getting on with him. And Porter seems to have the President’s ear, Porter and Swayne.”

“So there’s going to be a coup, and Porter’s aiming for C.O.S.”

“There could be. I’m really not sure. I don’t know if the President would be willing to lose Will or not. It’s more like there are two chiefs-of-staff right now, and the President listens to whichever one is telling him the things he finds most convincing, or whichever one is saying what he agrees with right then.”

“Does the President ever listen to you?”

“About presentation, yes.”

“About policy?”

“I haven’t been encouraged to speak out about that.”

“By the President?”

“By Will or Porter. They wanted a more definite hierarchy than you or Leo did. I’ve never been included in the kinds of discussions C.J. was.”

“Idiots.”

“Will didn’t use to be like that. He changed when he got into Leo’s office. I don’t know why, whether it was the way the President wanted it, or not.”

“Will was overwhelmed, Donna. He didn’t have anything like the experience he needed to do that job. I think C.J. was overwhelmed at first too, and she knew far more than Will did about the job, and had Leo there to help her. Hell, I would have been overwhelmed, and Leo had been training me all those years. When people are out of their depth they don’t want other people to know it. Sometimes they try to hide it by shutting the people they should be listening to out of the conversation, so they won’t get challenged, they won’t have to deal with dissent.”

“You wouldn’t have been like that.”

“I hope not. I got a reputation as a micromanager on our campaign, but that was because I didn’t have anyone I could trust to lean on, not because I was afraid of being disagreed with. I was desperate to have someone disagree with me, actually: when I found someone who was willing to argue with me, I hired her. Matt listened to her half the time instead of me and it drove me crazy, but I knew enough to know I didn’t have all the right ideas and couldn’t do the job by myself. Not that we managed to do the job anyway, even with Lou on board, even with Matt—and he’s a good man, Donna. He’s good because he doesn’t listen to everything anyone’s saying to him. He’s smart, he has great ideas, and he’s his own man, he thinks for himself. He wants to do the right thing whether it’s going to get him votes or not. I really thought he was the real thing.” 

“Oh, Josh. I wish I’d gone to work for your campaign instead of Russell’s.”

“I wish you had too, Donna. But I guess it was my fault you didn’t.”

“No, Josh. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Yeah, it pretty much was. Will gave you chances I never did, I’m not sure I ever would have. It’s one thing I’ve got to say I’m grateful to the guy for. I hated his guts for it at the time, but now . . . .”

“Oh, Josh.”

“I just couldn’t imagine life without you there beside me, you know? Looking after me, helping me out . . . .”

“I’m sorry, Josh.”

“It’s okay. I meant it—I’m grateful Will gave you the chance to find out what you could be. Gave both of us the chance to find that out. Look, Donna, could it be Will who put this bill in your folder?”

“It could be. I’ve been thinking about that, and I think it really could be. I can’t see his assistant or Porter’s walking into my office and going through the files on my desk to put something into one. Jennifer would have seen them go in and gone to find out what they wanted.”

“They might have gone in when she was away from her desk.”

“They might have, but I just can’t imagine their doing that. They’d have sent it to me through an interoffice envelope or put it in Jennifer’s inbox for me; they’d never walk into my office when I was out and treat my desk like it was their own. And I really can’t see Porter risking this bill to set me up; it’s too important to him. I think it must have been Will.”

“Then Will wanted you to do something with it.”

“Yes. But what?”

“I’m guessing he wants it to get out. Maybe he’s hoping you’ll leak it to the press. Maybe . . . .”

“Maybe what, Josh?”

“You’ll say it’s my ego talking, but—I was going to say, maybe he’s hoping you’ll leak it to me.”

“I haven’t told him about us yet. You know that.”

“I’m not sure you’d need to. I might be wrong, but—it wouldn’t surprise me if Will guessed we’d have kept in touch. He might not know we’re sleeping together, but he knows how close we used to be. And he knows how much you meant to me.”

“He does?”

“Yeah, he does. He was there when we heard about that bomb in Gaza; he saw me wigging out, yelling stuff about killing everyone who’d done it and everyone who’d helped them do it and everyone who was even happy they’d done it. He was there when I went tearing out of the White House and flew to Germany to be with you. Hell, he was there when I went to get you to go to the Inaugural Ball all those years ago; he saw my eyes popping out of my face when I saw you, even then. And he said some stuff, when he was trying to get me to join your campaign. He knows how I feel about you.”

“Then he knows how I feel about you, too, Josh. Or knows enough. You might be right—he might be hoping I’ll show this to you. Or to Helen Thomas and you.”

“If you show it to Helen, Porter will know who’s behind the leak, Donna. If I do something, only Will will know. And if Will gave it to you hoping you’d show me . . . .”

“What if he didn’t, Josh?”

“It’s a pretty good bet that he wanted you to show someone, anyway, Donna. If you don’t leak it to the press, Porter can’t accuse you of being behind the leak. If I go to the Hill this morning and start working to get people to vote against this, chances are Porter will never know a thing. You’ll be able to keep your job—at least for a while.”

“The job isn’t important, Josh—not as important as this. I think I should resign.”

“The job is important, Donna. If there’s a power struggle going on, Will needs all the allies he can get. I’m guessing he’s going to start counting you in on discussions more often now. You’ve said before that you think Russell likes you personally, and I expect he does—you’re a very likeable person, he’d be an even bigger fool than I think he is if he didn’t. You could have a chance to influence him, or to help Will influence him, to try to offset some of what Porter and Swayne are doing.”

“You’re starting to sound like Will, Josh. That’s what he used to say during the primaries—that Russell was going to be the Democratic candidate whether he was the best man or not, and he needed people like me and Will to get him to go in the right direction.”

“It’s different now. That’s a bad way to choose a candidate to work for, but Russell’s President now. There’s nothing we can do about that except make sure he’s got good people around him to listen to, and not just the Porters and the Swaynes.”

“You’re very convincing, Josh.”

“It’s because I’m right, Donna, and you know it. And that’s why I think I might be able to swing this vote the other way if I go and talk to people today. I still know most of the guys up there on the Hill, and they know me. I have access, and I have some credibility, because I never played dirty with them—I played hardball, but I played fair, and I think most of them respect me for that, even if they hate my guts. I don’t have the power of the White House to bargain with, but I’ve got something better than that.”

“What, Josh?”

“The Constitution, Donna. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”

“You’re an idealist, Josh. Everyone always says you’re just a Washington politician, but you’re an idealist.”

“I’m a Washington politician all right, Donna. I just have some principles. I believe in the rule of law, not men. That’s what democracy is all about—anything else is tyranny.”

“That’s what I’m talking about.”

“You think there’s something wrong with that?”

“I think there’s everything right about that. You’ll go to the Hill today, then?”

“I’m going now.”

“You might want to go home and change first.”

“I guess I could manage that.”

“But Josh?”

“Yes?”

“If it doesn’t work—if you don’t get the votes—I’m resigning.”

“I’ll get the votes. Do you really doubt me?”

“I’ve never doubted you, Josh.”

“Donna?”

“Yes, Josh?”

“Be careful, please. Don’t do anything—just, don’t do anything you could get yourself in trouble for.”

“I won’t, Josh. Not today, anyway.”

“And get plenty of rest, and drink lots of water, and . . . and . . . I’m not sure what else a pregnant woman is supposed to do, but be sure to do it.”

“I love you, Josh.”

“I love you too. You—you will marry me, won’t you, Donna?”

Donna actually burst out laughing, though she was crying a little too as she nodded and kissed him and said, “You ridiculous man. Of course I will.” 

She was halfway to the White House when she realized she’d forgotten to tell Josh to be careful, too.

* * *

Josh walked home, showered, changed, and took a taxi to the Hill. It was still early, but he knew a couple of congresspeople—congresswomen, actually—who could be counted on to be in their offices before seven. He called one of them from his cell phone and asked if he could have a few minutes in exchange for lattes and muffins from Starbucks; she greeted the proposal with the deep, fruity laugh he’d been expecting, and told him bribing a U.S. Representative was a federal offense but his security pass would be waiting at the door. 

Five hours and twenty visits later, he wasn’t sure whether he was going to be able to keep his promise to Donna or not. His story about the forthcoming bill had been greeted with surprise, guarded interest, and some disbelief, but not many promises to help spread the word. He’d been hoping to spark off a chain reaction; he’d never be able to get around the whole House by himself before tonight. And he was still convinced the leadership was going to call for a vote tonight. 

He glanced at the list of names he’d jotted down this morning, trying to decide which one of three or four possibilities to try next. He was just setting off towards Campbell’s office when his cell phone buzzed on his hip. He glanced at the number, and raised his eyebrows. He thought about not answering, but there was a question of respect—old habits died hard. He flipped it open and said his name.

“Hold for the President of the United States, please,” an unfamiliar woman’s voice said at the other end. 

“Hello, Josh,” said an all-too-familiar man’s voice. “This is President Russell.”

“Yes, sir,” Josh answered. “What can I do for you, sir?”

“I want to talk to you, Josh.”

“Yes, sir?”

“In my office. In half an hour.” 

“In half an hour, sir?”

“Yes. That’s not a problem is it, Josh?”

There was a question of respect, for the office if not for the man, and old habits died hard. “No, sir. I’ll be there, sir.”

“Thank you, Josh.” And the line went dead. 

* * *

The taxi set Josh down at 14th and Pennsylvania, which was as close as it could get. He walked the rest of the way, wondering what someone with a handicap would do. Presumably cars were still allowed in if the person in them was important enough, but access was definitely being severely restricted. The stretch of the Avenue in front of the White House was still closed to pedestrian traffic as well as cars, so Josh had to talk to a security guard to get by. He waited while the man spoke into his walky-talky, and watched what looked like an entire battalion of armed troops patrolling the streets around the building and Lafayette Square. Finally he was allowed through. He had to pass another security checkpoint at the gates, and then wait again by the metal detector at the front door. 

“How are you, Steve?” he asked the uniformed guard as he waited. 

“As good as you could expect, Mr. Lyman,” the man answered, “with all this going on.” And he waved a hand towards the street and, Josh assumed, the soldiers with their M-16’s and grenade launchers walking up and down. 

“It’s certainly changed,” Josh said. 

“It has, Mr. Lyman,” the guard agreed. “It has indeed. And not for the better.” He leaned forward a little then, so the other guards wouldn’t hear him. “Ain’t nothing ‘round here changed for the better, Mr. Lyman. Nothing.” And he looked into the lobby, tilting his head towards the West Wing, then looked back at Josh. “Nothing, sir. You know what I mean? Nothing.” Josh gave a nod, surprised by Steve’s indiscretion; White House employees were normally nothing if not tight-lipped about their personal politics.   
“But we’ll get through it, won’t we, sir?” the guard went on. “We’ll get through it. I keep thinking, that old flag out there, she’s seen plenty. But she keeps on flying. We’ll get through these times. We’ll endure—that’s what I say. We’ll endure.” 

“Yeah,” Josh said, suddenly intensely moved. “Yeah, we will.” 

“Don’t have much choice, do we?” the guard added, rhetorically. 

“Not much,” Josh agreed, trying to smile. Steve suddenly straightened and squared his shoulders. “And here’s Mr. Robarts, Mr. Porter’s assistant, for you, sir. You take care now, sir.”

“You too, Steve,” Josh said, picking up his visitor’s pass and turning to see a young, dark-haired man with an unsmiling face.

“Josh Lyman?” the man asked, as if he couldn’t be expected to know. “This way.” He turned abruptly, without offering his hand or his own name, and led the way through the corridors of the West Wing towards the Oval Office. The President’s secretary was away from her desk. Robarts gestured towards the door to the Oval, and left.

Josh opened the door. The room was empty.

He stood in the doorway, hesitating, not sure whether to walk in or not. The symbolism of the room was as powerful to him as it had always been, although he was vaguely aware that it looked different, and not in a way he liked. There seemed to be a lot more gold everywhere—on the walls, on the carpet—and a lot of mirrors and shiny crystal lamps and sconces. The Russells had redecorated, of course. It reminded him a bit of some baroque European palace like Versailles, and made him wonder if Bob Russell really saw himself as a kind of king. But if he did, he was an absent king: the chair behind the Presidential desk stood empty.

The door to the President’s private office opened. Josh straightened his shoulders and took a step into the room. Harold Porter walked in. 

“Josh,” he said, nodding, and motioning to one of the chairs in front of the President’s desk. “Sit down.” Josh crossed the room and took the proffered chair. Porter seemed to hesitate, and for a moment Josh thought he was going to take the chair behind the desk, but he stepped away from it and sat down in the armchair that Josh had left vacant. They sat there facing each other, the desk with the Presidential Seal in front and the empty chair behind it looming beside them in a way Josh found hard to ignore.

“Now,” Porter said in a gravelly voice, “about this business on the Hill this morning—”

Josh interrupted him. “I came at the request of the President,” he said. He tried to keep his tone neutral, knowing it would be more effective than if he went on the offensive right away.

Porter’s eyes narrowed. “The President had more pressing business to attend to,” he said. “He asked me to take care of you until he was free.” 

Josh set his mouth a little. He knew this game well: Donna had played it for him many times, and he’d played it too. Just not for the President, and not in the Oval Office. President Bartlet would never, ever have allowed someone else to take a meeting in the Oval Office when he wasn’t there. 

But he knew how the game worked, and if Porter thought he was going to tie him up for the rest of the afternoon waiting for Russell to show up, he was totally mistaken.

“I’m afraid I have a commitment in half an hour that I can’t break,” Josh said, still striving for an easy tone. “I can come back tomorrow, if the President wants to see me, but I can only stay for about twenty more minutes now.”

A flicker of annoyance crossed Porter’s jowly face. “Very well,” he said slowly, sitting back in his chair and wrapping his hands across his stomach. “I can say what has to be said just as well.”

Josh sat back too, and looked the man in the eye. “I came at the request of the President,” he said again, and this time he let a twinge of insolence into his voice. “If anyone else is going to take the meeting, it should be Will Bailey, surely. The President’s Chief of Staff.”

Porter’s already purplish skin turned a deeper shade of purple, and he leaned forward, his watery blue eyes changing to ice.

“I think you’ll find me good enough, Lyman,” he said. “You’re not doing a courtesy to the President, coming here. We’re doing a fucking courtesy to you.”

Josh raised an eyebrow. “Really?” he said. “Because I haven’t seen a whole lot of the courtesy yet.”

“You always were a smart-ass, weren’t you, Lyman? I don’t have any reason to give you the fucking red carpet today, and you know it. This is as good as you’re going to get from me, but if you’re as smart as you think you are, you’ll fucking well do what I say, whether you like the way I say it or not. You’ve spent this morning working against the President’s Patriot Act, up on the Hill. If you ever want to be anything in the Party again, Lyman, you’ll cut it out. Now. And you’ll tell me who your fucking source was.”

Josh gave Porter his own ice-cold look. “I’ll do nothing of the kind, Porter,” he said. “And you know it.”

“If you don’t, Lyman, the Party’s finished with you. Forever. For. Fucking. Ever. What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Lyman, working against the President and your own fucking party up there?” 

“I don’t know, Porter. Maybe exercising my right to free speech before you and your President take it away from me?”

Porter snorted. “Free speech! You can’t actually be that naive, can you, Lyman? Things have changed since you were here; it’s a different world out there.”

“Not that different.”

“The fuck it isn’t! Bombs in American subways and malls; an airplane flying into the White House. People too scared to go shopping, the DOW tanking—my investments are down, Lyman. We’re at war, and anyone who isn’t with us is against us. Bartlet could afford to be highminded. He could afford to sit on his ass and give pretty speeches about civil liberties and democratic ideals. He didn’t have to deal with the world we’re in now. Though maybe if he’d made fewer pretty speeches and done a little more dealing with the world he was in, we wouldn’t be having to deal with this one now.”

Josh felt the heat flush into his face, and had to take a deep breath and hold it to keep his temper reigned in. “That’s President Bartlet,” he said, softly, but with an edge of steel in his voice no one could have missed. “And that’s really all the time I have to waste today,” and he pushed himself out of his chair and started towards the door. 

“Where are you going, Lyman?” Porter called out as Josh was leaving, his voice snaking towards Josh’s back, laced with venom. “Back to that place in Virginia where you spent last summer?”

Josh stopped in his tracks, and turned slowly around. 

“That was quite the vacation you took, wasn’t it?” Porter’s face was full of satisfaction now. “At quite the place. Not exactly your typical country inn, was it?”

“What,” Josh asked, deliberately, “would you know about where I have or haven’t spent my vacations? And how would you know it?”

Porter laughed. “The F.B.I. works for me, Josh. And so do all the other intelligence agencies—for me, or for the President, which comes to the same thing. You don’t think we actually waited to put all those clauses you’ve been lobbying against into practice, do you?”

“That’s illegal.”

“If the President authorizes it, it’s legal enough for me.”

“And did the President authorize this?”

Porter just smiled. He looked, Josh thought, remarkably like a crocodile. A fat, jowly, purple-cheeked, but very sinister crocodile.

“I told you you’d be finished in the party, Josh. I should have said you’d be finished in politics, period.”

Josh stared at him for a long moment. “I don’t think so,” he said then, leaning back against the doorframe and crossing his arms across his chest. “I’m good enough that they won’t care.”

“Are you really willing to chance it? To have everyone know? Your friends. Your family. Your girlfriend, if you have one. Any girl you’d like to pick up. That lovely little blonde who used to work for you—I’ve heard you had a thing for her; would you like her to know? Not that you’d have a chance with her anyway; she doesn’t have a brain in her head, but she knew enough to get out of that job and sleep her way into this one. What, you’re surprised? Wouldn’t she put out for you? I guess you didn’t offer her enough; Will Bailey had to make her Press Secretary, after all. But do you want her to know about you? Or anyone else? Everyone else. Every person you’ve ever met, every person you ever will meet, to know in exquisite detail just what a crazy fuck-up you really are?”

Josh felt the heat flash into his face at hearing Donna described that way, but his fury was tempered by relief at realizing that Porter didn’t know that she was with him. He must have done his research back when Josh was blasting the administration, but dropped it after he’d gone quiet, or after the attacks of 6/16 had swept away other concerns. Josh wondered how much information about him the man actually had. He couldn’t imagine Sue Thornton parting with any details—at least, not knowingly. There was always the possibility that someone lower on the totem pole or with lower professional standards might have photocopied whatever notes she’d taken and passed them on. Or they might simply have surrendered the clinic’s admissions records. He should have used a fake name, he thought, but there wouldn’t really have been much point to that when his face was so well-known. And the place had expected a legal signature on all the waivers he’d had to sign. Not that it made much difference, really; the bare fact of where he’d been and why would be enough to embarrass him for the rest of his life. And his mother . . . . He shuddered a little inside at the thought of his mother finding out what he’d done. But then he thought of what she’d say if she ever found out he’d traded the Bill of Rights for her peace of mind or his personal privacy, and lifted his chin.

“There are worse things,” he said, and started to turn again towards the door.

“I knew a man like you once, Lyman,” Porter said, and there was so much silken menace in his tone that Josh stopped and half-turned towards him again. “A real smart-ass, who thought he was the cock of the walk, but everyone knew he was a crazy man. It was back in Colorado—you know I’m from Colorado, don’t you? I was at Colorado Mining; that’s how I got to know the President. And this crazy guy. He was always mouthing off at somebody. Didn’t seem to care who; he thought he was bigger than anybody, even the head of Colorado Mining. Mouthed off to one of his guys once—to one of the President’s guys. No one was too surprised when they found him at the bottom of a mineshaft the next day. They figured he’d done it himself, realized he’d burned his bridges, wasn’t going to have much hope of a job or a life out there again. He’d always been a nut case, and Colorado Mining really was the only game in town.”

Josh stared at him. A muscle in his face twitched, and a vein on his forehead throbbed. Porter smiled his crocodile smile. And at that moment, Will Bailey walked into the room.

“Mr. President, about this thing on the Hill—Harold? Josh?” Will stopped in his tracks, his mouth a little open. Then he shut it, firmly, and adjusted his glasses. But for just a moment Josh had seen the surprise in his face. And then something else, a flash of something in his eyes that, though guarded, was not unwelcoming.

“Don’t worry, Will,” Porter answered. “I’ve got it under control. Lyman here and I have just been talking about it. There’s just one thing we still need to know, Lyman. Who’s your source?”

Josh saw Will blink. He turned back to Porter and smiled his coldest politician’s smile.

“Wouldn’t you like to know, Porter?” he said. “I’m going now. The President’s expecting me. President Bartlet, that is; you know I’m working with him on his library, don’t you? You’d be surprised how well-informed he still is, even though he’s been ill; he talks to everyone. And everyone talks to him.” 

Harold Porter glared at him. Josh turned and left the room. “Remember what I said, Lyman,” he heard Porter’s voice calling after him, “I meant it. Colorado Mining’s the only game in town.” And then Will’s, angry-sounding, but lower-pitched than Porter’s and too quiet for Josh to catch what he was saying as he nodded at Mary, back at her desk now, and then walked unescorted through the familiar corridors and out the front doors. 

* * *

Josh walked away from the building more slowly than usual. He stood for a moment on Pennsylvania Avenue and looked back at it: the clean white facade, the neoclassical architecture which (he remembered being told by someone, somewhere) had been chosen for this building for the same reasons it had been so beloved by the Founding Fathers in all their homes, because its regular geometry represented to them balance and order, the rule of principle and law—the same qualities they had embedded in the Constitution when they chose to make their new country a nation governed by laws, not by men. He looked at the flag flying high on the flagstaff in front of it, and felt that surge of pride he always felt whenever he really noticed it—a pride he’d always been too embarrassed to admit to, but couldn’t deny to himself. It was, to him, simply the most beautiful flag in the world, with its crisp red and white stripes and its bold blue field spangled so brilliantly with little white stars. A star for each state, including the one he still thought of as his, Connecticut. And one of those stripes was Connecticut’s, too. As a boy he’d always liked the fact that his state was one of the original thirteen, rich in the history of the colonies and the Revolution, entitled to its own stripe on the flag. Connecticut settlers were the first to draw up a constitution to govern themselves by, the precursor to all the others, including the great, unifying one that was lying even now in its vault in the Archives building just up the Mall. They’d been told about that endlessly in school, along with all the other things Connecticut colonists had done. The statue of the Minuteman that stood on Compo Beach in Westport had been part of the backdrop of his childhood, a constant reminder both of his state’s proud history and of the vigilance and sacrifice that had been required to create a nation and pass it on to others. 

Vigilance, and sacrifice. Josh turned and walked slowly down 15th Street, past the Ellipse to Constitution Avenue—there was no escaping that word in this city—and the Mall. Ahead of him stood the Washington Monument on its grassy knoll, its circle of flags flapping around it, more red, white, and blue. He was struck by the absence of people around it. Usually there was a long line of tourists waiting to get in, and families playing ball or flying kites on the lawn at its base, but since the attacks the Monument had been closed, and the presence of concrete bunkers and armed guards no doubt discouraged parents from wanting to bring their children to play near it, even where the park was still open. It was one of the discouraging signs of the times they were living in—the times he and Donna were about to bring a child into.

Josh turned away from the Monument and began to walk, still slowly, westwards. He didn’t go down to the Reflecting Pool but stayed on the path that led around the little lake to the north of it. There were families here, as there always were, children eating ice-cream and feeding ducks and sailing toy boats on the water. Josh stood for a while, watching them, his heart pounding in his throat, and thought again about what Donna had told him last night. They were going to have a child; he was going to be a father. He wanted it desperately. He wanted to hold his baby. He wanted to give him his bottle when Donna needed a break from nursing, change her diapers, walk with him on his shoulder patting his back and saying soothing things to him when he was crying in the night. He wanted to see his baby growing up and taking her first steps. He wanted to see his child climbing in the apple trees, running through the garden, reading in front of the fireplace where he and his sister had climbed and run and read in the house in Connecticut. He wanted to bring his child here and buy her ice-cream. Help him feed ducks. Teach her how to throw a ball. Show him how to sail a toy boat. He wanted to take her up the Washington Monument and tell her about this city and what he’d done there; show him the Capitol, take him around the White House, talk about how his mother and his father had worked to make laws that would make the country he was growing up in a better place. Watching the children playing there by the water on that sunny afternoon, a stone’s throw from the grand buildings he’d worked so hard in, Josh had never wanted fatherhood so badly. And he could have it. If he just went home now, he could have it. If he just went quietly home to Donna, who was pregnant with his baby, it would be his. 

He turned away from the children and kept walking. The path curved around, and the low black wall began to rise beside it—the wall with the names carved on it of all the men and women who’d died in the war when he was young. The wall whose surface was polished and gleaming so you could see your own face reflected there, and the faces of everyone who’d come to look and maybe find a name they knew, the name of someone who’d belonged to them. Brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, husbands and wives—every name represented someone who had been someone else’s everything. Just as he was to Donna and would be to that baby. Just as Donna and that baby were to him.

It had been a bad war. Every name on that wall seemed to him a tragedy, lost not in the struggle for something good or great but just because their country’s leaders had been too misguided, too arrogant, too proud, perhaps too fearful to say no and put a stop to it. Democrats, too—it was Johnson who had committed Americans to that war, Johnson and even Kennedy; one couldn’t lay all the blame on Nixon, much though Josh would have liked to. Wasted lives, wasted promise. One had to be sure that what one was fighting for was the real thing. But one also had to make sure that no more brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, husbands and wives had to die that way.

He followed the path past the end of the wall and the statues of the soldiers and on to the end of the Reflecting Pool, then crossed the road and walked slowly up the steps to the Lincoln Memorial. He stood there as he’d often done before, looking up at the great statue of the great man, with his wise eyes and careworn face, and at the inspiring words carved in the walls around him. He thought about the war Lincoln had fought and the men who had fought and died in it to preserve a nation and to extend the promise of its freedoms, if not fully to everyone who lived in it, at least more fully to more of them. Josh was under no illusions about the absolute success of that war or the absolute purity of Lincoln’s motives for fighting it, just as he was under no illusions about the perfection of the Constitution that had, for the nation’s first century, permitted slavery and denied citizenship to anyone but white men—but he’d always believed that, without the ideals expressed in Lincoln’s words and in that Constitution, there would be no nation worth living in today. There would have been no union for anyone to fight to save, and slavery would have continued indefinitely—some version of it would still be continuing, perhaps. You had to have it—you had to have a document like that to base yourself on, or you had nothing. You had to have a rule of law, not of men; men became slave-owners and tyrants too easily. He’d always wondered why most Americans felt so complacent about their leaders, so indifferent when they went to the voting booth to anything but their own immediate personal likes and dislikes, or their own immediate financial loss or gain. Most of them never seemed to stop and consider the bigger picture, to think that it was only a step or two from electing the wrong man for the wrong reasons to following him into the invasion of a Poland or a Netherlands and suffering the horrors of a war that ended with the bombing of a Dresden or Koln. Following him into the bloodshed of a Krystalnacht and becoming the keepers or the inmates of a Treblinka, a Birchenau, a Dachau. Maybe it was Josh’s own family history that made it seem so essential to him that the man or woman elected to a position as powerful as the United States Presidency truly be the real thing, someone able to stand up under the responsibilities and temptations of the office, someone worthy to be called, however archaically, the Leader of the Free World. 

Freedom. What was it, if not the right to live securely in a country governed by laws, not by men? Not to be sent to war without good cause. Not to have one’s children sent to war without good—without very good, without excellent—cause. Not to have one’s privacy invaded without reasonable cause and due process; not to be subject—no matter who you were, no matter what you might have done—to being whisked away without legal representation, a legal charge and a fair and legal trial. Josh had never practiced as a lawyer, but he held his Yale degree and his place at the bar dear. Getting it hadn’t been just a means to an end for him, a stepping-stone into politics, although it was partly that: the language of law, the principles of it had been deeply embedded in him since his childhood. He had learned to respect them at the family dinner table, at his father’s knee. He’d come close to compromising the Constitution once or twice himself in his eagerness to secure a win, but he’d never done it deliberately and never would. He still remembered the sting of President Bartlet’s rebuke to him over that once, gentle though it had been. That was why you needed a man of Bartlet’s stature in the office: if even he, Josh Lyman, with all his intellectual abilities and experience and devotion to ideals could come close at times to throwing the baby out with the bathwater, to giving away the Bill of Rights for the sake of political gain, then he didn’t trust many people to do much better. But they didn’t have a Bartlet anymore. They didn’t have a Matt Santos. They didn’t have an Arnold Vinick. They had Bob Russell. Or Bob Russell and Harold Porter, who had just made his willingness to compromise almost anything extremely plain.

Josh turned around. At the foot of the steps he could see a little family, a small girl and her smaller brother poking with sticks in the tranquil waters of the Reflecting Pool while their mother and father looked on, laughing. The mother was slim, with long blonde hair. Behind them the Monument and the Capitol were lined up like a shot for a postcard, their flags flying proudly, red, white and blue. The sun was bright in his eyes, which might have been what made them water. He rubbed his hand across them, then started down the stairs. His pace quickened as he moved, until he was jogging. He shouldn’t have taken so long; he might not have much time.

Back at the street he flagged down a taxi and got in. “The Hill,” he said. He took his cell phone out and opened it, wanting to call Donna and tell her what he was doing and why, wanting just to hear her voice again. But calls could be traced, or listened in on. There were chances he was willing to take, and ones he wasn’t—Porter obviously hadn’t known that Donna was involved with him, and he wanted to keep it that way. He fingered the phone for a minute, then closed it and slipped it back in his pocket. He looked out the window all the way to the Capitol, watching the children playing on the Mall. 

* * *

“Harold, this is Congressman Schaeffer.”

“Yes, Congressman?”

“He’s back.”

“Damn it. Has he been there long?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve been in a meeting. A couple of hours, maybe more.”

“Who’s he seen?”

“Redford, Campbell, Thompson, Banks—probably others, I’m not sure.”

“Fuck.”

“I thought you’d want to know.”

“Yes, I do. Thank you, Congressman.”

“Not at all. Anything to help the President.”

“Thank you. He won’t forget it.”

* * *

“Department of Defense. Secretary Patrick Swayne’s office.”

“It’s Harold Porter, Susan. I need to speak to the Secretary.”

“I’ll put you right through, sir.”

* * *

“Mr. President?”

“Yes, Pat?”

“We’ve got a Code Red situation on the Hill, sir.”

“Code Red?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What do I do?”

“I just need your authority to start the response, sir.”

“Take whatever steps are necessary, Mr. Secretary. You have my full authority.”

“Yes, Mr. President. I’ll do that right away.”

* * *

“Captain Newart?”

“Yes, Mr. Secretary.”

“We have a Code Red situation up there. Begin the response immediately.”

“Yes, sir. Do we have any information, sir? Who we’re looking for, anything like that?”

“I’ve sent several of my men up; they should be arriving now. They know all the details.”

“Yes, sir. I should begin now, sir?”

“Now, Captain Newart.”

“Yes, sir.”

* * *

Josh walked out of Rep. Finnegan’s office on the balls of his feet. He was beginning to think he was getting somewhere with this. It seemed Bekker had been more impressed than he’d seemed this morning, and had been making some calls while Josh was tied up at the White House. Finnegan had already heard the story, and was up in arms. She was going to talk to Clifford, Jaffe and Filurski, while Bekker worked more of his circle of friends and allies. Josh had several more names he urgently wanted to talk to himself, but he had a chance now of alerting enough people by this evening that the White House would face a serious challenge on the floor.

He walked down the long hallway, fast, as always. There was a group of tourists hovering with a guide at the end of the hall. “Now, this mural by Allyn Cox shows the Constitutional Congress of 1787,” the woman was saying in a clear, carrying voice. “They’re meeting in Benjamin Franklin’s garden, working on the United States Constitution and creating the system of checks and balances which, as you know, was designed to guard against tyranny and which still exists today. The panel on the right shows a colonist barring his door, symbolizing the desire for freedom from unreasonable search and seizure which was eventually addressed in the Fourteenth Amendment.” “Why did they wait that long?” a man in her group asked, when an alarm began to ring and the P.A. system crackled into life. 

“Red Alert, Red Alert. We have a terrorist Red Alert. Everyone should leave the building at once. This is not a drill. Walk, do not run to the nearest exit. I repeat, this is NOT a drill. We have a terrorist Red Alert.”

The tourists screamed. Doors started to open all around Josh, and people began to pour out and down the hall, everyone talking, their voices and the tourists’ screams and the sounds of their hurrying feet all echoing noisily through the marble halls. Uniformed Capitol Police were suddenly everywhere. Josh started to head towards the exit when four large men in sunglasses and dark suits appeared around him.

“You’re coming with us,” one of them said, taking his arm and giving him a shove. “Thought you could get away with it, did you?” said one of the others, grabbing him from the other side, hard. 

“You can’t do this,” Josh said, loudly, “I haven’t done anything,” but his protests were drowned out by the noise all around him. The four men pushed Josh through the door and down the great stone stairs at the back of the building to the Mall. He had a fleeting impression of the flag waving against the blue sky and children playing on the green grass before he was dragged into a car that pulled suddenly up on the footpath beside them, and then, screeching its tires, drove away.

* * *  
* * *


	5. Epilogue, Version 1

Epilogue, Version 1:

So, this is the ending as the story originally came to me. It’s the hard-to-take one, and while there are some good things that happen here too, if you don’t think you can take the bad part, you shouldn’t read it. Nobody needs to read it to finish the story, though: this is a ‘What if?” story in an alternative universe, and there’s no reason it can’t have “what if?” alternative endings. I see the second ending (the one I’ll be posting next) as just as valid as this one. There are probably many other ways this story could come out too, but everyone’s time and patience are limited here, so these two are the ones I’ve come up with—feel free to imagine others, if they don’t satisfy. 

But for this ending, the “what if?” goes like this: what if, in a climate of political fear, in which those in power in government have shown a willingness to suspend certain basic guiding principles, one or two people at least are willing to suspend them a little farther in order to silence opposition and achieve their political ends? This is my idea of what could happen then.

 

Donna got home late that night. There had been a terrorist threat on the Hill, and the entire Capitol building had had to be evacuated. She called a late press briefing and assured them that the situation was now under control. A suspect had been apprehended. No, the Capitol Police were not releasing his name. No, she had no other information at this time.

When she left, she didn’t know whether the House Leader was going to call a vote on the Patriot Act that night or not. The threat against the Capitol made the anti-terror law seem all the more urgent, but he was being pressured by some of his most influential members to hold off until they had time to give the measure proper consideration and debate. Porter was locked up in his office, shouting into his phone. Will was shut up in his, but he wasn’t shouting and Donna wasn’t sure what side of the problem he might actually be coming down on. 

It sounded as if Josh had managed to stir up enough voices of protest that there was at least a chance that the vote would be delayed—or, if it was called, might fail. She couldn’t wait to see him and tell him what was happening and how much he’d accomplished. And she was starving. She wondered if he’d have gotten home in time to make dinner for them, or if they should just order Chinese. 

She was surprised to find the house dark and quiet. Josh must still be on the Hill, then, courting Congressmen to vote against the Act. It was funny he hadn’t called her to let her know, but probably he’d been too busy even to think of it. She tried him on his cell, but got a message telling her the customer she was trying to reach was unavailable; he must have switched the thing off. She rummaged in the refrigerator for the leftovers from last night’s dinner, ate them, cleaned up, and went to bed alone.

The next morning Porter was in a temper. The House Leader had refused to call the vote until that afternoon. Donna smiled to herself. She tried to reach Josh on and off all morning, but he never remembered to turn his cell back on. Probably he’d forgotten to charge it and the battery was dead. She’d tease him about that sometime, but not tonight—tonight he would either be drinking from the keg of glory or in the depths of despair, and he didn’t really deserve to be played with when he was feeling either way, after all he’d done. 

The vote was called at 4:00. Donna held her breath till the last vote was in, and was bitterly disappointed when the Act passed. The debate had been heated, though, and the vote close. What would happen in the Senate wasn’t clear. Donna held her press briefing, packed her briefcase, and went home. To her surprise, the house was still dark. She couldn’t see any signs that anyone had been there at all.

She tried to call him on his cell. She tried to call him at home. She got in her car and drove to his house, but it was dark. She drove home, parked in her spot, rummaged in her dresser drawers till she found the key he’d given her years ago, then—still mindful of photographers—walked back and let herself in. Josh wasn’t there. The red light on his phone was blinking; the messages were mostly hers.

She walked back home and sat up all night, waiting. He didn’t come. The next morning she dragged herself into work, but couldn’t concentrate. The Senate decided to postpone a vote on the bill for another day; she didn’t care. She started calling hospitals, the police, but got nothing. Then she started on congressmen she thought Josh might have talked to on Tuesday. That was more productive: quite a few said he’d been in their offices, campaigning vigorously against the Act. The last one who seemed to have seen him was Congresswoman Finnegan; he’d been in her office just before the alert had been sounded and the building cleared. 

Shortly after one o’clock, Will called her into his office. He was afraid he had some very bad news. Donna was amazed at her own composure. She asked when; he said probably sometime last night. She asked where; he said down by the river, a short walk from his house in Georgetown. She asked how; he said a shot to the head. The gun was in his hand. The police were investigating, but it looked like suicide. 

How was she? Donna heard herself telling Will that she needed an hour or two by herself but then she would take her press briefing and make the announcement. He said she didn’t have to, someone else could do it; she said she wanted to, it should be her. She told Jennifer to hold her calls, closed her door and put her head on her desk—Josh’s desk. She didn’t cry. Her eyes hurt, her head hurt, her whole body hurt, but she didn’t cry; she couldn’t. Crying was for lesser things than this. Crying usually helped, but nothing could help this. Nothing would ever help this. 

At 3:00 Donna stood up and gathered up her things. She put the photos she kept on her desk in her briefcase, straightened her blouse, checked her makeup, tidied her hair. Her face in her mirror looked pinched and wan, her eyes looked bloodshot even though she hadn’t cried. She picked up her briefcase and walked to her briefing room, where she steadied her hands on the podium and made her announcement: at shortly after 9:00 that morning the body of Joshua Lyman, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff, had been found by a woman walking her dog in a patch of weedy trees and bushes down by the Potomac. He had been shot once in the head. The gun was in his hand. The police were investigating. Yes, the presumption was that it was suicide; however, she was certain that it was not. Yes, Helen, she could comment further. As everyone there knew, she had worked for Josh for almost eight years. What everyone there probably did not know was that, after a period of estrangement, she and Josh had recently repaired their friendship and become lovers. She knew Josh intimately in every sense of the word, and she knew for an absolute fact that he would not have killed himself now. The last time she had seen him had been early Tuesday morning; the last time anyone else had seen him that she had been able to learn of had been just before the bomb threat at the Capitol that afternoon, when he had been visiting congressmen in an effort to prevent the passage of a bill that perilously endangered Americans’ rights and protections under the Constitution. He had discussed his plans with her before he left to do this. Nothing—she was absolutely certain that nothing—would have made Josh choose to quit before he had done everything he could to stop that bill becoming law, and even when it had passed in the House she knew that he would have chosen to continue fighting to have it rejected by the Senate or overturned by the Supreme Court. Moreover—and here Donna’s voice choked a little, and she had to stop for a moment to collect herself—moreover, Josh had just learned that he was about to become a father. He had wanted a family very much, and he had been happier than she had ever seen him at the news. He had asked her to marry him, and she had said yes. Donna was not going to speculate about what had happened to him two nights ago, but she hoped that the press would not listen to calls for patriotic solidarity with an administration that had shown itself to be utterly uninterested in upholding the Constitution, as the President when he had taken his Oath of Office had sworn to do. She herself was resigning her position as White House Press Secretary, effective immediately, and intended to use whatever time was left to her to work against the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, which had passed in the House but was still pending a vote in the Senate, so that Josh would not have died in vain. 

While she was talking, Harold Porter was shouting at her through the closed pressroom door, but Will Bailey was standing in front of it, shouting back that only an idiot would try to stop her in front of a roomful of journalists with cameras and phone connections to newsrooms all over the world. When she had finished, Donna stepped off the podium and walked down the steps in front of her into the room. The press pool surged around her, begging for more comments, but parted to let her pass through them when she asked them to, then flowed after her through the outside door. 

“You’ll need police protection,” one of the men from the New York Times said in her ear. 

“Whether I’m protected or not will depend on who the police work for, won’t it?” she answered. 

“You’ll be safe if the press is with you,” he answered. “I can have guys outside your door twenty-four hours a day.” 

“Thank you,” she said, and thought how ironic it was that she would turn to the press for protection when she and Josh had lived in fear of them for so long.

Josh’s story and Donna’s made headlines in every major newspaper across the country the next day. The Senate postponed a vote on the Patriot Act until more was known about Josh’s death. The story of his previous attempt at suicide came out, but Dr. Susan Thornton made a statement declaring her professional opinion that Josh had confronted the issues that had led to that attempt and had not been at any risk for another, especially as she knew from her discussions with him that marriage and a family with Donna would have been exactly what he would have wished for. The investigation into his death was still ongoing when the Senate Majority Leader brought the Patriot Act to a vote, where it was resoundingly defeated. The next day a measure was introduced in the House to impeach the President. It failed, but later, as more was learned about Josh’s death and as the war in Qari’stan grew increasingly unpopular, it was reintroduced and succeeded. To avoid becoming the first American President to be forced from office by impeachment, Bingo Bob Russell resigned. Eric Baker, who had never been included in the Oval Office loop, succeeded him and went on to be a reasonably successful and popular president who oversaw the withdrawal of American troops from Qari’stan. After a long investigation, two of the four agents who had taken Josh from the Capitol eventually confessed, and pointed at Defense Secretary Patrick Swayne as having given them their orders. Swayne in turn pointed the finger at Harold Porter, insisting he’d been misinformed. The Oval Office taping system was subpoenaed, and while insufficient evidence was found to indict former President Russell or his Chief of Staff Will Bailey, Harold Porter was convicted and, together with Swayne and the agents, went to jail. Bob Russell disappeared from public life. Will Bailey went back to California, where he was offered the chance to help another dead man get elected to office. He declined, saying two was enough. 

Donna’s baby was a boy. She called him Joshua, of course, and had quite a lot of help in raising him from all their old friends. Toby took a special interest, as did Sam and C.J. and Danny, but no one was more involved than Leo, unless it was former President Bartlet himself. When Joshua was old enough, Donna gave him the battered copy of the Constitution that she’d found on Josh’s shelves, and told him that his father would have wanted him to have it. President Bartlet asked to see it the next time he visited. 

“He would have written something in it,” Donna told him, her eyes misting over. 

“What would he have said?” Joshua asked. 

“I don’t know,” she said. “But it would have been beautiful. Your father could be very eloquent when he wanted to be, although he could sound like someone had tied his tongue in knots sometimes, too.” 

“I’ll write in it for you, if you like,” President Bartlet said. 

“Yes, please, Grampy Jed,” Joshua said. “Write what you think my father would have said.” 

Jed Bartlet thought for a minute, and then produced his favorite pen and wrote with a flourish across the inside cover of the little booklet his friend’s child was holding out to him. 

“Is this something my father would have said?” Joshua asked, looking at it. He was only seven, but he could read well already, and Jed had made his letters big and clear on purpose. 

“I don’t know if he would have said it, son,” Jed said, very seriously, “but he believed it. He lived it.” 

“Did someone else say it?” Joshua asked. “I’ve seen part of it before. It’s on the license plate of your and Granny Abbey’s car.” 

“That’s right, Josh,” Jed said. “A man called John Stark said that part. And one called Patrick Henry said the other.” 

“Who were they, Grampy Jed?” 

Jed looked at Donna, who was crying quietly now. 

“They were patriots, son,” the former President answered, softly. “Like your father.”

* * *  
* * *

(There are notes at the end of the second epilogue, if anyone doesn't recognize the quotes or wants more information about the material in this story.)


	6. Epilogue, Version 2

Epilogue, Version 2: This is the second ending. Mistletoe gave me a very hard time   
while I was writing this story, and finally brought me round and got me to agree   
that maybe it was possible to end this more happily than I’d originally envisioned. It’s just as well she did, because I don’t think I could have finished writing it if I’d had to think of the ending I just posted as the final word. They both seem possible to me, but I’m sentimental enough to hope that things could end this way, if someone along the chain of command balked at going as far as they did in Epilogue 1. 

Parts of this duplicate parts of the first version--my apologies to anyone who’s reading both. And to anyone who shares my dislike of Harold Porter, feel free to   
imagine the worst happening to him after this is done. My favorite possibility was   
suggested by kt, who wrote, "You’re gonna have to have Porter and Russell struck   
by lightening and surviving to be hanged, drawn and quartered before crowds of   
people throwing rotten produce, as the Voice of God speaks the words ‘You bastards! What are you doing to this country?’" I couldn’t possibly top that. . . . 

Epilogue, Version 2: 

Donna got home late that night. There had been a terrorist threat on the Hill, and   
the entire Capitol building had had to be evacuated. She called a late press briefing and assured them that the situation was now under control. A suspect had been apprehended. No, the Capitol Police were not releasing his name. No, she had no other information at this time. 

When she left, she didn’t know whether the House Leader was going to call a vote on the Patriot Act that night or not. The threat against the Capitol made the anti-terror law seem all the more urgent, but he was being pressured by some of his most influential members to hold off until they had time to give the measure proper consideration and debate. Porter was locked up in his office, shouting into his phone. Will was shut up in his, but he wasn’t shouting and Donna wasn’t sure what side of the problem he might actually be coming down on. 

It sounded as if Josh had managed to stir up enough voices of protest that there was at least a chance that the vote would be delayed--or, if it was called, might  
fail. She couldn’t wait to see him and tell him what was happening and how much he’d accomplished. And she was starving. She wondered if he’d have gotten home in   
time to make dinner for them, or if they should just order Chinese. 

She was surprised to find the house dark and quiet. Josh must still be on the Hill, then, courting Congressmen to vote against the Act. It was funny he hadn’t called her to let her know, but probably he’d been too busy even to think of it. She tried him on his cell, but got a message telling her the customer she was trying to reach was unavailable; he must have switched the thing off. She rummaged in the refrigerator for the leftovers from last night’s dinner, ate them, cleaned up, and went to bed alone. 

The next morning Porter was in a temper. The House Leader had refused to call the vote until that afternoon. Donna smiled to herself. She tried to reach Josh on and off all morning, but he never remembered to turn his cell back on. Probably he’d forgotten to charge it and the battery was dead. She’d tease him about that sometime, but not tonight--tonight he would either be drinking from the keg of glory or in the depths of despair, and he didn’t really deserve to be played with when he was feeling either way, after all he’d done. 

The vote was called at 4:00. Donna held her breath till the last vote was in, and was bitterly disappointed when the Act passed. The debate had been heated, though, and the vote close. What would happen in the Senate wasn’t clear. Donna held her press briefing, packed her briefcase, and went home. To her surprise, the house was still dark. She couldn’t see any signs that anyone had been there at all. 

She tried to call him on his cell. She tried to call him at home. She got in her car and drove to his house, but it was dark. She drove home, parked in her spot, rummaged in her dresser drawers till she found the key he’d given her years ago, then--still mindful of photographers--walked back and let herself in. Josh wasn’t there. The red light on his phone was blinking; the messages were mostly hers. 

She walked back home and sat up all night, waiting. He didn’t come. The next morning she dragged herself into work, but couldn’t concentrate. The Senate decided to postpone a vote on the bill; she didn’t care. She started calling hospitals, the police, but got nothing. Then she started on congressmen she thought Josh might have talked to on Tuesday. That was more productive: quite a few said he’d been in their offices, campaigning vigorously against the Act. The last one who seemed to have seen him was Congresswoman Finnegan; he’d been in her office just before the alert had been sounded and the building cleared. When Donna got home that night, the house was dark again. She called the police then and filed a missing persons report, but day after day went by, and she heard nothing. 

Two days before the Patriot Act was due to be voted on by the Senate, Donna gathered her personal possessions from her desk in her office and walked into her briefing room. Steadying her hands on her podium, she said that she knew most of the people in front of her were already aware that she had begun her career as an assistant to Josh Lyman, the former White House Deputy Chief of Staff who had more recently become known for his strenuous criticism of the current White House administration. What they perhaps did not know was that, after a period of estrangement, she and Josh had recently repaired their friendship and become lovers. A few days ago she had learned that she was expecting his child. He had been overjoyed, and had asked her to marry him. She had said yes. He had then left for the Hill, planning to campaign there against the Patriot Act, whose text she had shown him and which both of them believed perilously endangered Americans’ rights and freedoms under the Constitution. That was the last time she had seen him. The last time anyone else had seen him that she had been able to learn of was just before the security alert that had caused the Capitol to be evacuated. The police had suggested to her that people often chose to disappear, but she knew Josh very well indeed and she was certain that nothing--absolutely nothing--would have made him choose to leave what he was doing before he had done everything he could to stop the Patriot Act from becoming law. Donna was not going to speculate about what had happened to him, but she hoped that the press would not listen to calls for patriotic solidarity with an administration that had shown itself to be utterly uninterested in upholding the Constitution, as the President when he had taken his Oath of Office had sworn to do. She herself was resigning her position as White House Press Secretary, effective immediately, and intended to use whatever time was left to her to work against the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, which had passed in the House but was still pending a vote in the Senate, so that Josh would not have worked against it in vain. 

While she was talking, Harold Porter was shouting at her through the closed pressroom door, but Will Bailey was standing in front of it, shouting back that only an idiot would try to stop her in front of a roomful of journalists with cameras and phone connections to newsrooms all over the world. When she had finished, Donna stepped off the podium and walked down the steps in front of her into the room. The press pool surged around her, begging for more comments, but parted to let her pass through them when she asked them to, then flowed after her through the outside door. 

"You’ll need police protection," one of the men from the New York Times said in her ear. 

"Whether I’m protected or not will depend on who the police work for, won’t it?" she answered. 

"You’ll be safe if the press is with you," he answered. "I can have guys outside your door twenty-four hours a day." 

"Thank you," she said, and thought how ironic it was that she would turn to the press for protection when she and Josh had lived in fear of them for so long. 

Josh’s story and Donna’s made headlines in every major newspaper across the country the next day. The investigation into his disappearance was still ongoing when the Senate Majority Leader brought the Patriot Act to a vote, where it passed anyway, though by a slim margin. The ACLU hired Donna to act as a spokesperson against it as they began the long process of challenging the Act in the courts; she was able to raise quite a lot of public sympathy for their cause. The baby came, a boy. She wanted to call him Joshua, but Josh’s mother and Toby both reminded her that a Jewish child wasn’t named after a living person, so she called him Noah instead. If even Toby wasn’t prepared to stop hoping that somewhere, somehow, Josh was still alive, Donna certainly wasn’t. 

It was hard, looking after the baby and doing her public work too, but she had a lot of help from Josh’s friends. Toby took a special interest, as did Sam and C.J. and Danny, but no one was more involved than Leo, unless it was former President Bartlet himself. But still, she had good days and bad days. On the good ones she sometimes took out the postcard Josh had brought with him from the house in Connecticut, and looked at what he had written on it and at the mountains on the front, so blue and strong and enduring, in spite of everything that had happened over so many years to wear them down. She looked at it on the bad ones, too. It was harder then to find the point of it, but she remembered what Josh had used it to help him fight back from, and then she would feel a little stronger, a little more able to get through another day. 

The war dragged on. Russell became increasingly unpopular, especially as the press became bolder and began to print more stories about the N.S.A. and their surveillance of U.S. citizens, or the C.I.A.’s prisons in Eastern Europe, where terror suspects were held in secret and terrible things were sometimes done. When the next election came, Arnold Vinick ran again and won by a landslide. He had campaigned on his plans to withdraw from Qari’stan and dismantle the surveillance programs and the C.I.A. prisons, insisting that the U.S. would be most secure when it was known throughout the world as a truly law-abiding country that could be trusted to act in accord with its own Constitution and with international law. Donna voted for him. Although they never admitted it, so did every one of Josh’s old friends, even Leo and the Bartlets. 

Noah was a late talker. Some people worried about it, but since he could put together fifty-piece puzzles before he was two, Donna wasn’t one of them. He said his first full sentence the same day Donna got a call from Mike Caspar at the F.B.I. She burst into tears, and Noah said, "Don’t cry, Mommy; it’s all right." It seemed typical Lyman overachievement that his first sentence should be a compound one. He hadn’t said anything but single words before that, but she’d always known he was just being stubborn, like his father. 

Leo had tickets to Germany for them by that afternoon. They flew to Landstuhl, just as Josh had to see her all those years ago. 

* * * 

The light was too bright; it hurt his eyes. He squeezed them shut again. He was floating on a dark, fuzzy sea. The darkness was almost better than the light, easier, more comfortable, though he knew there was pain there, just under the surface of the waves, washing under him, washing over him. He didn’t really mind; he could deal with that kind of pain. It was the light he wasn’t sure he wanted to deal with. If he opened his eyes there was light that was too bright and hurt. . . .

But then he remembered, the way he always did. Out there in the light somewhere, he had his reasons. His reasons not to let himself disappear into the darkness. His reasons to keep opening his eyes, whether it hurt or not. 

Out there in the light somewhere, someone was waiting for him. Two someones. He was sure of it; it was the fact he held onto, always. Keep trying, he always thought. No matter what’s waiting for you right now, they’re out there waiting too, and someday, somehow . . . . He had to keep trying. He couldn’t let himself slip into that comfortable, easy darkness. He had to open his eyes, no matter how much . . . . 

"Josh." 

What? 

"Josh." 

No. 

"Come on, Josh." 

It couldn’t be. 

Not really. 

"Please, Josh. Wake up. Talk to me." 

Could it? 

"Talk to us." 

Really? 

"It’s okay, Josh. You’re going to be okay." 

Maybe he was. 

"We’re here, together. All three of us. It’s going to be okay now. You’re going to be okay." 

Yeah, he was. He really was. 

He opened his eyes, and the light hurt them. But that didn’t matter. That really didn’t matter at all. 

* * * * * * * * * 

The End 

This is my last story. I’d really appreciate your feedback. 

* * * 

More Notes, for anyone who’s interested: 

In 1994 a small plane actually did crash into the lawn behind the White House, having evaded the no-fly zone that existed over downtown D.C. even before 9/11, the radar at National Airport, and the Secret Service snipers on the White House roof. I’m assuming that something similar could have happened in a pre-9/11 security environment here, especially if the Secret Service was distracted by a bomb going off on the other side of the building just before the plane appeared. 

The Patriot Act of this story is not an exact version of the actual one, but a compilation of that and other bills and orders passed after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. Anyone interested in knowing more about the actual U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act can find the text of it, a helpful summary, and discussion at the ACLU page:   
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/resources/17343res20031114.html. The Act in this story includes the main points of the real-life Patriot Act, and also provisions that, as I understand it, were issued in a Presidential Military Order on Sept 18, 2001, including "the power to declare anyone suspected of connection to terrorists or terrorism, as an enemy combatant" and to hold that person "indefinitely, without charges being filed against him or her, without a court hearing, [or] . . . legal consultant." (Wikipedia, Article on "Habeas corpus," subsection "Suspension during the War on Terrorism":   
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus#Suspension_during_the_War_on_Terrorism) 

In case anyone has forgotten, the original Patriot Act was passed in a late-night session of Congress, with very little discussion. 

The docent’s speech about the Cox murals on the House side of the Capitol was taken directly from the text on this site:   
http://www.aoc.gov/cc/art/cox_corr/g_exp/constitutional.cfm.   
There are some nice pictures there, too--check them out, they’re interesting. 

The quotations President Bartlet writes in Joshua’s copy of the Constitution in   
Epilogue 1 are the New Hampshire state motto, written in 1809 by the New Hampshire Revolutionary War general, John Stark, "Live free or die: death is not the worst of evils," and Patrick Henry’s famous declaration in St. John’s Henrico Parish Church in Richmond, Virginia on May 23, 1775: "I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death." 

And, finally, if you’re not already a member of the ACLU, please consider joining:   
http://action.aclu.org/site/PageServer?pagename=FJ_donationhome 

Additional Note (6/3/08): I recently re-read some stories I hadn’t looked at in a long time, and realized that the idea of having Josh go to look at the house in Connecticut where the fire happened and find it for sale had come from Jacinta’s "Sagatauk," the fifth chapter of her (unfortunately, unfinished) series, "Relapse": http://www.westwingfic.netfirms.com/fics/relapse/relapse5.htm  
My apologies for not having realized this when I first posted this, but I’d like to make amends by giving credit now. 

* * * * * * 

The End (really)


End file.
